(Dt&cr  hoofed  bp  jlatp 


THE  LAND  OF  LITTLE  RAIN 

ISIDRO 

THE  BASKET  WOMAN 

THE  FLOCK 

LOST  BORDERS 

THE  ARROW  MAKER 

CHRIST  IN  ITALY 

THE  GREEN    BOUGH 

LOVE  AND  THE  SOUL-MAKE 

A  WOMAN  OF  GENIUS 

THE  LOVELY  LADY 

THE  LAND  OF  THE  SUN 

THE  MAN  JESUS 


J 


THE  FORD 


\ 


TWO  MEN  THAT  WRESTLED  AND  BROKE  APART  AND 
CLUTCHED  AGAIN   (p.  14G) 


THE   FORD 

BY 

MARY  AUSTIN 

With  Illustrations  by  E.  Boyd  Smith 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

<Cfce  £t!iier<sib£  prcgg  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  MARY  AUSTIN 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  April  IQIJ 


el- 


-     . 


K  ! 


e  rose  wp  $a£  ra^Atf,  and  £oofc  his  two  wives,  and  his  two 
womenservants,  and  his  eleven  sons,  and  passed  over  the  ford 
Jabbok.  And  he  took  them,  and  sent  them  over  the  brook,  and  sent 
over  that  he  had.  And  Jacob  was  left  alone;  and  there  wrestled  a 
man  with  him  until  the  breaking  of  the  day.  And  when  he  saw  that 
he  prevailed  not  against  him,  he  touched  the  hollow  of  his  thigh;  and 
the  hollow  of  Jacob's  thigh  was  out  of  joint,  as  he  wrestled  with  him. 
And  he  said,  Let  me  go,  for  the  day  breaketh.  And  he  said,  I  will 
not  let  thee  go,  except  thou  bless  me.  And  he  said  unto  himt  What 
is  thy  name  1  And  he  said,  Jacob.  And  he  said,  Thy  name  shall 
be  called  no  more  Jacob,  but  Israel:  for  as  a  prince  hast  thou  power 
with  God  and  with  men,  and  hast  prevailed.  .  .  .  And  Jacob 
called  the  name  of  the  place  Peniel:  for  I  have  seen  God  face  to 
face,  and  my  life  is  preserved.  And  as  he  passed  over  Penuel  the 
sun  rose  upon  him,  and  he  halted  upon  his  thigh. 

THE  BOOK  OF  GENESIS 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

TWO  MEN  THAT  WRESTLED  AND  BROKE  APART  AND  CLUTCHED 

AGAIN  (p.  146) Frontispiece 

YOU  CALL  THIS  A  FREE  COUNTRY  AND  YOUR  FLAG  THE  EMBLEM 
OF  LIBERTY" 186 

AT  ITS  HEAD,  DEPLOYED   ON  EITHER  SIDE  A  TOP  BUGGY,  RODE 

FOUR  HORSEMEN 378 

SHE  SAW  HIM  AND   STOOD   STILL,   WAITING 440 

From  drawings  by  E.  Boyd  Smith 


THE   FORD 


BOOK  FIRST 


THE  FORD 


FROM  the  first  Virginia  had  insisted  on  playing  the  Angel. 
She  stood  straight,  with  her  feet  wide  apart  and  her  hands 
on  Kenneth's  shoulders;  her  hair  blew  backward  in  the 
wind  out  of  the  Draw,  and  her  eyes  were  shining.  Ken 
neth  had  his  arms  about  her  waist  and  tugged  and 
strained.  The  part  of  Jacob  had  been  conceded  to  him  in 
his  right  as  shepherd  of  the  lamb-band,  browsing  in  the 
deep  meadow  of  Mariposa  beside  the  creek  which  did 
duty  as  the  brook  Jabbok. 

A  somewhat  older,  rather  overgrown  and  gangling  boy 
lounged  on  the  sandbank  and  umpired  the  play  in  a  way 
that  the  Brent  children  sometimes  found  annoying.  Ever 
since  Frank  had  come  back  from  San  Francisco  the  last 
time,  he  had  shown  as  much  superiority  toward  the  dem 
ocratic  play  of  Las  Palomitas  as  he  dared  without  being 
left  out  of  it  altogether.  He  suffered  the  necessity  of  all 
despots  of  keeping  himself  provided  with  an  occasion  for 
exercising  his  dominant  humor. 

"Go  on,"  commanded  Virginia  to  her  adversary,  "say 
it." 

Kenneth  butted  his  forehead  into  her  breast  bone  and 
gripped  with  his  arms. 

"Tell  me,"  he  panted,  "thy  name." 

"There!"  cried  the  exasperated  Virginia.  "You've  got 
the  words  all  wrong  again!"  She  relaxed  her  pose  and 


THE  FORD 


turned  in  swift  appeal  to  the  umpire,  as  she  was  not  above 
doing  when  it  suited  her.  "It's  'Tell  me,  I  pray,  thy 
name.' ':'  Virginia  had  made  the  play  out  of  a  book  called 
"Bible  Stories  for  the  Young,"  and  quoted  freely  from 
her  own  composition.  She  twisted  about  to  assure  herself 
of  Frank's  recommendation.  Kenneth  slipped  his  arms 
down  to  her  hips;  suddenly  the  Angel  lay  sprawling  on  the 
pebbly  border  of  the  Ford.  She  gave  one  astonished  squeal 
as  she  went  down.  The  little  Romeros,  who  were  not 
supposed  to  associate  with  the  white  children  of  Las  Palo- 
mitas  except  on  sufferance,  from  their  gallery  on  the 
crumbly  bank  of  the  Wash  gave  a  shrill  little  whoop  of 
delight.  They  had  not  understood  very  well  what  the 
play  was  about,  and  when  they  saw  Kenneth  looking 
scared  and  Anne  running  to  gather  Virginia  in  her  arms, 
they  changed  to  a  note  of  soft  commiseration. 

Virginia  was  dazed  and  shaken  by  the  fall,  but  her  eyes 
were  blazing. 

"It's  no  fair,"  she  cried;  "you  have  to  play  it  the 
way  it  is.  .  .  .  Look  there  what  you've  done,"  she  tri 
umphed. 

She  had  abraded  her  elbow  on  the  pebbles  and  it  was 
beginning  to  bleed  a  little.  The  four  Romeros  came  down 
from  the  bank;  nobody  could  have  had  the  heart  to  deny 
them  a  closer  view  of  so  interesting  an  occasion.  Vir 
ginia,  at  any  rate,  had  n't;  she  turned  up  her  sleeve  to 
show  the  extent  of  her  damage;  the  eyes  of  Ignacio  Stan- 
islauo  expressed  the  compassion  of  a  Raphael  cherub  for 
an  early  Christian  martyr. 

"Me  —  I  feex  him!"  he  cried.  He  dashed  off  up  the 
creek  toward  the  wet  meadow  where  the  Mariposa  came 
out  of  the  Draw.  The  four  other  Romeros  were  divided 


THE  FORD  5 

between  loyalty  to  the  chief  of  their  clan  and  hopeful 
curiosity  over  the  outcome  of  imminent  war  among  the 
Gringos. 

"It  says,  'Tell  me,  I  pray,  thy  name'!"  Virginia  was 
implacable.  "I  was  trying  to  get  you  to  say  it  right  and 
you  took  advantage  of  me." 

Kenneth,  between  the  flush  of  victory  and  embarrass 
ment  at  having  hurt  a  girl,  found  it  impossible  to  explain 
that  the  connotation  of  "I  pray"  in  his  mind  made  it  a 
word  admissible  only  at  the  bedside  and  on  Sundays. 

" Ought  n't  he  to  say  it  right?"  Virginia  appealed  to 
the  company.  "It's  in  the  Bible,"  she  brought  out 
irrefutably. 

"Aw  — "  Kenneth  was  taken  suddenly  with  a  sense  of 
world-old  feminine  evasion.  "It's  in  the  Bible  that  the 
Angel  could  n't  be  throwed.  That 's  the  way  with  girls, 
they  want  to  play  they  are  angels,  but  the  boys  have  to 
do  all  the  pretending." 

A  diversion  was  created  at  this  juncture  by  the  return 
of  Ignacio  Stanislauo  with  a  handful  of  the  pink-veined 
leaves  of  yerba  mansa.  He  poked  them  at  Virginia  per 
suasively. 

"You  put  this  on  your  arm,  he  won't  hurt  you  no 
more  .  .  .  siempre,  siempre  .  .  .  my  mother  tole  me." 

Ignacio's  mother  being  an  Indian  it  was  indubitable 
that  she  should  know  the  virtues  of  all  herbs.  It  was  true 
he  had  seen  her  use  the  yerba  mansa  only  for  burns,  but  it 
was  all  one  to  Ignacio  Stanislauo  if  he  could  serve  the 
Gringos.  Even  Frank  came  back  into  the  community  of 
interest  to  watch  the  shaping  of  the  poultice,  for  which 
Anne  demanded  his  handkerchief. 

"It's  silk  — "  he  began  to  protest. 


6  THE  FORD 

Anne  looked  at  him;  there  was  not  the  slightest  trace 
of  persuasion  or  compulsion  in  her  tone. 

"It's  bigger  than  mine,"  she  said,  "and  Ken  hasn't 
got  any." 

Virginia  being  comfortably  swathed  in  it,  was  restored 
to  her  normal  consciousness  of  ascendancy. 

"You  couldn't  do  it  again,"  she  notified  Kenneth; 
"not  if  I  was  looking  out  for  you." 

"Aw,  go  on,"  Frank  scorned;  "do  you  want  a  fellow  to 
throw  you  twice?" 

Anne  was  swift  in  placation. 

"We  could  play  Moses  and  the  Hebrew  children,"  she 
suggested.  "The  Romeros  could  be  Pharaoh's  army." 
That  had  been  one  of  their  successes  of  the  summer 
before,  even  though  the  little  Romeros  had  been  obliged 
to  lie  down  in  the  sun-warmed,  sandy  shallows  for  the 
Red  Sea  of  Mariposa  Creek  to  roll  over  them,  for  nobody 
minded  if  Ignacio  and  Francisco  and  Pedro  Demetrio  and 
Carmelita  and  Manuela  came  home  with  their  clothes 
soaked  and  sun-dried.  Now  at  the  end  of  February  the 
oldest  of  the  tribe  tested  the  water  with  his  bare  toe  and 
opined  that  it  was  too  cold. 

"The  very  idea!"  Virginia  found  it  unspeakable  that 
the  Romeros  should  develop  an  independent  point  of 
view;  what  was  to  become  of  half  their  entertainment? 
"You  can  just  splash  about,"  she  conceded. 

But  nobody  made  a  move  to  begin.  The  truth  was 
that  the  children  were  outgrowing  the  age  of  make-be 
lieve,  though  none  of  them  knew  it.  The  littler  Romeros 
lined  up,  looking  at  her  apologetically,  like  so  many  dark, 
bright-eyed  little  birds  on  a  bough.  In  the  silence  they 
heard  the  click  of  horses'  feet  coming  down  the  Draw. 


THE   FORD  7 

The  meadow  of  Mariposa  Creek  lay  close  up  under  the 
Torr'.  It  was  more  than  a  mile  from  the  ranch  house  and 
was  kept  clear  for  the  lambing  ewes  on  account  of  the 
lush  grass  and  the  strip  of  windy  dunes  that  fenced  it 
from  the  valley.  At  the  upper  end  of  the  meadow,  where 
the  creek  came  out  in  soddy  runnels  under  the  fern,  the 
Torr'  began.  It  rose  from  the  mesa  that  closed  the  south 
ern  end  of  Tierra  Longa,  with  the  smooth,  lovely  swell  of 
a  woman's  breast.  Where  it  abutted  on  the  flanking  range, 
the  Draw  opened  narrowly  and  winding.  It  led  by  intri 
cate,  roundabout  ways  to  the  mysterious  region  of  cities 
and  men,  brooded  over  by  a  perpetual  haze  of  heat,  known 
in  Tierra  Longa  as  "over  beyond."  The  little-used 
wagon  road  trailed  like  a  dropped  thread  across  the 
Mariposa  and  down  to  Arroyo  Verde,  islanded  by  its 
green  fields  in  the  opal- tinted  valley.  At  this  season 
nothing  came  into  Tierra  Longa  by  way  of  the  Draw 
except  an  occasional  prospector  on  his  way  to  the  Coast 
Ranges,  or  a  wool-buyer  from  Summerfield.  v\The  clink  of 
shod  hoofs,  then,  on  the  stones  of  the  Draw,  and  the  half- 
glimpsed  figures  behind  the  thick  ranks  of  the  chaparral 
beginning  to  be  fretted  by  young  leafage,  had  the  exciting 
charm  of  the  unusual,  the  mysterious.  Unconsciously 
the  children  drew  all  together  at  the  edge  of  the  shallows. 
The  dogs  that  from  the  bank  had  been  interested,  one 
might  almost  say  intelligent,  spectators  of  the  play,  got 
up  now  uneasily  and  walked  their  accustomed  round  of 
the  flock  that  frisked  and  fed  in  the  meadow. 

The  riders  came  out  of  the  Draw,  bending  to  avoid  the 
buckthorn  branches.  They  forsook  the  beaten  track  and 
skirted  the  spongy  meadow  where  the  creek  issued  from 
the  hill.  A  third  horse  with  the  pack  fell  to  cropping  the 


8  THE  FORD 

wet  grass  where  he  found  it;  he  was  practiced  in  that 
business  and  did  not  waste  himself  on  detours  of  investi 
gation.  The  two  men  dismounted  and  began  to  poke 
oddly  about  in  the  black,  pasty  loam  under  the  fern. 

As  the  taller  of  them  turned  below  the  willow  hum 
mock,  the  children  saw  him  lift  a  handful  of  the  oozy 
earth  almost  to  his  face  as  though  to  taste  or  smell  it. 
Halfway  in  the  act  he  had  his  first  sight  of  them,  their 
frank,  staring  curiosity.  He  made  no  startled  movement, 
but  slowly  he  let  the  hand  drop  and  the  wet  slime  trickle 
from  his  fingers,  toward  which  he  did  not  so  much  as 
glance  aside,  though  they  saw  him  wipe  them  stealthily 
upon  the  tall  fern.  Without  turning  or  taking  his  eyes  off 
the  children  he  spoke  to  his  companion,  and  in  a  moment 
the  two  of  them  came  riding  directly  to  the  Ford. 

This  companion,  who  rode  foremost,  was  so  much  a 
part  of  what  they  were  accustomed  to  see  moving  about 
the  great  spaces  of  Tierra  Longa,  sandy-colored  and  trail- 
weathered,  in  garments  of  no  noticeable  cut  or  color, 
that  they  took  scarcely  any  notice  of  him;  it  was  on  the 
tall  man  that  all  their  attention  hung. 

He  was  both  thin  and  tall,  the  thinness  accentuated  by 
the  drooping  black  mustache,  which  reached,  swallow- 
pointed,  below  his  chin  and  followed  the  lines  of  his  huge 
tapaderas.  One  of  his  eyes,  of  an  extraordinary  opaque 
blackness,  had  a  slight  cast  which  seemed  to  render  it 
capable  of  going  on  with  a  separate  intelligence  of  its 
own,  ruminating  when  the  other  was  observant,  quick 
when  it  was  still.  His  clothes  also  were  black;  soft  hat 
and  curly  chaps,  as  black  as  the  blackest  wether  of  the 
flock,  quite  enough  to  have  established  his  singularity  in 
a  country  where  even  the  human  inhabitants  took  on  the 


THE  FORD  9 

tawny  colors  of  the  soil.  Out  of  the  depths  of  his  coat  the 
polished  ebony  handle  of  a  revolver  protruded. 

As  the  pair  let  down  the  bridles  of  their  horses  at 
the  Ford,  they  swept  the  whole  of  Tierra  Longa  before 
their  eyes  came  to  rest  on  the  children  huddled  like  an 
telope  under  the  shallow  bank,  with  a  fixed,  bright  curi 
osity. 

The  sandy  man  picked  out  Kenneth  at  a  glance. 

"This  the  way  to  Brent's  ranch?" 

"Over  the  hill  there/'  All  the  children  turned  to  show 
him,  with  their  concentrated  gaze,  the  white  walls  of  the 
ranch  house  behind  the  blue  haze  of  the  figs  and  the  pink 
of  the  orchard. 

"Boss  at  home?"  It  came  as  one  word  really  like  his 
former  question,  but  at  Palomitas  they  heard  little  else 
than  the  clipped  speech  of  the  ranges. 

"They're  cleaning  out  the  ditch."  Kenneth  strove  to 
be  accurate;  he  had  no  notion  as  yet  of  an  incentive  to  be 
anything  else.  "They'll  be  done  by  this  time."  The 
chorus  turned  as  one  to  point  the  westering  sun  behind 
the  Coast  Range. 

"Ask  him  how  far  it  is  to  Agua  Caliente,"  the  dark 
man  suggested  as  though  he  found  himself  unpossessed 
of  the  communicating  medium. 

"Two  miles  by  the  lower  field,  three  by  the  ranch 
house,"  Anne  interpolated  freely;  she  resented  the  indi 
rect  speech  as  including  them  all  somehow  in  the  tribe  of 
the  Romeros. 

"Ask  them  if  old  man  Rickart  is  at  home."  The  dark 
man  insisted  on  an  unusualness  of  address  that  began  to 
make  itself  felt  even  with  the  children,  not  bred  to  any 
kind  of  fear  or  favor.  They  waited  this  time  for  the  ques- 


10  THE  FORD 

tion  to  reach  them  by  way  of  the  sandy  man,  and  then 
for  Frank  to  whom  it  pertained  to  answer  it. 

"My  father  is  in  San  Francisco,"  he  condescended  at 
last,  not  without  an  appreciation  of  the  possible  effect  it 
would  have  on  his  interlocutors.  That  it  had  its  effect 
was  evident  from  the  quick  centering  of  their  attention 
on  him.  The  pair  looked  him  over  with  a  kind  of  stealthi- 
ness  which  extended  even  to  the  wordless  communication 
which  passed  between  them. 

"When's  he  calculatin'  to  get  back?"  the  sandy  man 
wished  to  know,  this  time  without  any  audible  prompt 
ing. 

"He's  going  round  by  Summerfield  first."  Frank  al 
lowed  himself  the  air  of  being  deep  in  his  father's  affairs. 

"Oh!" 

"Huh!" 

These  two  remarks  appeared  to  be  struck  out  of  his 
listeners  as  the  note  of  their  respective  metals.  "Huh," 
said  the  dark  man  with  an  intensifying  of  the  husky 
whispering  which  affected  all  his  speech.  All  the  little 
Romeros  shivered  to  hear  it.  The  strangers  reined  their 
horses;  they  rode  up  out  of  the  Ford  and  gained  the 
Ridge  which  lay  between  the  meadow  and  the  house; 
they  had  their  heads  together  as  they  disappeared  over 
it.  Ignacio  Stanislauo  crept  up  to  Virginia  with  whom  he 
acknowledged  a  community  of  dramatic  interest. 

"That  black  man  —  he  ees  un  didblo."  He  made  the 
Roman  sign,  mixed  with  a  native  Indian  gesture  of 
repulsion. 

Virginia  clutched  at  the  suggestion  in  an  ecstasy  of 
shudders. 

"Get  out!"  Frank  cut  her  short.   "They're  prospec- 


THE  FORD  11 

tors.  That's  why  they  were  so  anxious  to  know  if  my 
father  was  at  home.  I'll  tell  Dinnant.  He'll  soon  let 
them  know  that  we  don't  allow  anything  of  that  sort  at 
Agua  Caliente."  Tom  Dinnant  was  the  warden  of  the 
Rickart  principality  which  ran  all  along  the  wooded 
Coast  Ranges  almost  to  the  Bay.  It  was  the  boast  of  the 
elder  Rickart  that  he  could  drive  his  beeves  to  market 
on  his  own  ground;  but  he  maintained  it  strictly  his  own, 
he  permitted  no  trespassing. 

Frank  turned  and  began  to  walk  back  toward  the 
lower  field  where  he  had  left  his  horse  tied.  The  little 
Romeros,  seeing  there  was  no  more  entertainment  to  be 
got  out  of  the  Gringos  for  that  day,  scattered  down  the 
creek  to  look  for  taboose.  Anne  and  Virginia  had  their 
arms  about  each  other. 

They  had  come  up  out  of  the  Wash  to  the  grassy  flat 
where  the  ewes  were,  and  it  was  feeding-time.  Scores  of 
white  lambkins  tugged  at  the  maternal  fountain.  Here 
and  there  some  reluctant  mother  had  been  reconciled  to  a 
changeling  by  the  skin  of  her  own  dead  lamb  sewed  over 
its  body,  the  little  dried  legs  dangling  pitifully.  All  across 
the  meadow  they  heard  the  blether  of  distracted  ewes 
inquiring  for  the  lambs  that,  answering  each  to  its  famil 
iar  baa,  trotted  unsatisfied  at  its  mother's  heels  until  by 
some  accident  she  turned  and  muzzled  it.  Finally  the 
field  was  all  atwinkle  with  white  wagging  tails  that  went 
slower  and  slower  until  they  ceased  from  repletion.  It 
was  a  sight  none  of  the  children  could  resist,  though  they 
might  see  it  every  day  from  the  middle  of  February  on 
until  weaning-time.  They  waited  now  until  the  dogs, 
seeing  the  lambs  begin  to  frisk  about  again,  had  set  the 
flock  in  motion. 


12  THE  FORD 

There  was  nothing  that  made  it  particularly  a  hardship 
for  Kenneth  to  herd  the  lamb-band  in  the  naturally 
fenced  meadow  of  Mariposa.  Once  or  twice  over  the 
trail,  the  sheep  traveled  it  with  eagerness  in  the  morning 
and  with  the  docility  of  habit  at  night.  On  this  afternoon 
the  other  children  had  come  out  to  keep  him  company. 

Now,  as  they  turned  in  all  together  behind  the  bleating 
ewes,  some  instinct,  working  in  them  as  subconsciously 
as  the  spring,  set  the  girls  off  toward  the  upper  trail 
which  Kenneth  was  forbidden  to  take  with  the  sheep;  it 
led  to  the  entangling  gullies  of  the  Torr'  where  the  ewes 
lost  their  lambs  or  tired  them  with  much  running.  Ken 
neth  regarded  this  defection  with  dismay;  faint  lines  of 
cleavage  threatened  their  democracy  of  play. 

He  executed  a  sudden  change  of  front  in  the  face  of 
Frank's  detected  maneuver  to  join  them.  "Awl  — 
Come  on  ...  don't  be  tagging  the  girls  all  the  time." 

Anne  repaid  him  over  her  shoulder. 

"The  sun's  over  Baldy,"  she  reminded.  "You  know 
what  you'll  catch  if  you  are  as  late  as  you  were  last 
evening." 

Kenneth  knew  perfectly,  but  he  thought  it  unsisterly 
of  Anne  to  refer  to  it.  Besides,  he  could  have  got  the 
ewes  in  early  as  easy  as  not  the  night  before;  he  had 
merely  wanted  to  find  out  if  that  roadrunner  really  had 
a  nest  in  the  camisal.  Virginia  followed  up  the  advan 
tage.  She  called  to  the  twins,whom  nobody  ever  thought 
of  addressing  as  though  they  had  more  than  a  single 
identity. 

"You  know  what  you  won't  get,  if  you're  late  to 
supper." 

They  knew,  of  course.  They  would  be  turned  over  to 


THE  FORD  13 

the  charity  of  Sing  Lou,  and  whatever  Virginia  might 
have  left  of  the  dessert.  Against  that  alarming  contin 
gency  the  lamb-band  had  a  diminishing  interest.  They 
felt  it  necessary,  however,  to  lag  behind  it  for  another 
quarter  of  an  hour,  just  to  prove  to  Virginia  their  scorn 
of  feminine  adjuration,  shying  stones  at  the  bob  owls 
that  with  the  twilight  began  to  come  out  whoo-hooing  at 
their  burrows.  Kenneth  was  pleased  to  have  Frank  to 
himself  on  any  terms,  pleased  enough  to  go  lightly  along 
with  running  jumps  from  hillock  to  hillock,  saying  noth 
ing.  Now  and  then  one  or  the  other  of  them  whistled 
to  the  dogs  or  answered  the  owls  at  their  mating.  As  they 
came  up  over  the  Ridge,  a  long,  mole-like  rise  of  the 
land  running  from  the  foot  of  the  Torr'  far  out  into  the 
valley,  they  made  out  the  figures  of  two  riders  and  a 
led  horse,  moving  up  the  river  road  toward  Palomitas. 

"It's  those  two  prospectors."  Frank  was  certain. 
"They  must  have  turned  across  the  flat  as  soon  as  they 
were  out  of  sight  of  us." 

"What  for!"  Kenneth  wondered. 

"They  meant  to  cross  the  river  farther  down,  so  Din- 
nant  should  n't  see  them.  Now  they  find  they  've  got  to 
come  back  to  the  bridge."  It  seemed  a  reasonable  ex 
planation.  "They  will  probably  camp  in  the  willows  and 
cross  after  dark."  Frank  gave  a  snort  of  contempt.  "A 
lot  of  good  that'll  do  them!" 

Kenneth  admired  Frank's  perspicacity  immensely. 

"What '11  Dinnant  do  to  them?"  He  hoped  it  might 
run  to  shooting  or  something  equally  exciting. 

But  Frank  preferred  to  wag  his  head  portentously, 
saying  nothing. 

The  flock  turned  of  its  own  accord  into  the  beaten 


14  THE  FORD 

track  that  led  past  the  lower  fields  to  the  lane  between 
the  orchards.  The  sun  behind  the  Coast  Range  had 
turned  it  airily  blue  and  rilled  the  valley  with  a  diffused, 
mellow  light. 

The  mesa  here  was  dotted  with  oaks,  all  in  tender  leaf, 
and  about  its  dimpled  hollows  ran  drifts  and  drifts  of 
white  forget-me-nots.  Over  the  flats  there  was  the  deli 
cate  flutter  of  cyclamen;  they  swarmed  and  hovered 
above  the  damp  places.  As  the  flock  shouldered  along 
the  fenced  field,  it  checked  and  crowded  on  the  edge  of 
the  old  wash  of  Vine  Creek.  Kenneth  quickened  the 
docile  ewes  with  his  voice,  he  whistled  up  the  dogs;  for 
answer  the  flock  rolled  back  along  the  fence,  blatting 
confusedly.  Above  the  blether  the  boys  caught  the  rush 
of  descending  waters.  They  knew  in  an  instant  what  had 
happened.  The  men  had  been  busy  cleaning  the  ditch 
and  had  turned  the  water  back  in  its  ancient  channel. 
Nobody  had  remembered  about  the  lamb-band. 

" You'll  never  get  them  across."  Frank  was  familiar 
with  the  ways  of  sheep. 

"I  got  to."  There  were  never  any  two  ways  to  Ken 
neth.  He  had  been  told  to  bring  the  sheep  home  below 
the  house.  The  waters  of  Vine  Creek  tore  along,  dark 
with  the  dust  and  rubbish  of  the  abandoned  years,  with 
the  noise  and  motion  of  a  great  cat  worrying  a  bone. 
With  all  its  volume  and  swiftness  the  creek  was  not  so 
deep  in  places  that  the  sheep  could  not  have  crossed  in 
safety  if  they  could  have  been  persuaded  to  cross  at  all. 
But  before  the  boys  had  discovered  the  difficulty,  the 
leaders  had  turned  back  along  the  bank,  and  the  check 
had  served  to  dissipate  the  shallow  impulse  of  their  daily 
habit.  They  had  forgotten  that  they  had  set  out  to  go  to 


THE  FORD  15 

the  corral.  Somehow  a  gently  sloping  declivity  always 
incited  the  lambs  to  play;  they  ran  now  in  all  directions 
leaping  and  bunting.  The  boys  and  dogs  together  dashed 
out  and  around  them.  Three  times  they  headed  the  flock 
toward  the  shallows,  and  each  time  their  silly  fears 
halted  the  leaders  on  the  edge  of  the  rushing  water  and 
communicated  to  those  pressing  from  behind. 

"If  we  could  get  old  Ringstreak  over,"  panted 
Kenneth. 

Ringstreak  was  the  bellwether,  a  scraggly,  captious 
ancient  of  the  flock.  Suddenly  Frank  dashed  into  the 
bunch  after  her;  he  seized  the  wether  by  the  rump,  crowd 
ing  and  jamming  her  through  the  huddle  and  into  the 
stream.  As  he  scrambled  up  on  the  farther  bank  with  the 
astonished  wether,  he  heard  Kenneth's  cry  behind  him 
above  the  blatting  of  the  flock.  By  his  precipitance  one 
of  the  lambs  had  been  crowded  off  the  bank  into  the  deep 
water. 

It  went  over  and  over  —  one  brief  little  choking  baa, 
and  then  the  steady  gurgle  of  the  water.  The  flock  broke 
from  the  bank  again,  every  ewe  calling  distractedly  to 
her  own  lamb.  All  at  once  the  orphaned  mother  con 
cluded  that  her  own  must  be  in  the  place  where  she  had 
last  fed  it,  and  tore  back  toward  the  meadow  with  the 
whole  excited  train  at  her  heels. 

The  boys  looked  at  each  other  across  the  brown  ripple; 
far  below  them  they  could  still  see  a  white  object  bobbing 
and  turning. 

"Ah,  won't  you  catch  it,  though  .  .  .  won't  you  just 
catch  it!" 

The  tone  in  which  Frank  measured  the  completeness 
of  the  disaster  dangled  him  just  out  of  reach  of  it.  Sud- 


16  THE  FORD 

denly  his  horse  whinnied  from  the  fence  where  he  had 
tied  it  earlier  in  the  afternoon.  "I  got  to  go  home/'  he 
announced. 

A  sense  of  insupportable  forsakenness  kept  Kenneth 
speechless.  He  was  used  to  Frank's  method  of  taking 
himself  out  of  trouble;  what  staggered  him  was  the  want 
of  any  sense  of  obligation  to  the  senseless  flock.  He 
turned  and  began  to  run  blindly  back  after  the  sheep. 
When  he  stumbled,  the  pressure  on  his  chest  broke  into 
dry,  gasping  sobs.  He  was  aware  as  he  ran  of  the  pene 
trating,  musky  scent  of  the  little  white  gilia  that  opens 
after  the  sun  goes  down;  he  could  see  the  flutter  of  petals 
between  his  hot  eyelids  and  the  earth.  The  dogs  had 
halted  the  ewes  before  he  came  up  with  them,  and  by 
degrees  he  was  able  to  turn  them,  blatting  a  continuous, 
mild  protest,  along  their  earlier  track. 

Kenneth's  legs  twinkled  back  and  forth  to  keep  them 
in  the  way,  but  at  ten  and  a  half  there  is  a  limit  to  what 
legs  can  do.  He  was  quite  spent  when  they  came  again 
to  the  bank  of  the  Wash.  Suddenly  lights  broke  out  in 
the  corral  at  the  top  of  the  lane;  they  heard  the  tinkle  of 
the  bellwether  on  the  upper  bank.  The  sheep  had  forgot 
ten  their  fears  and  remembered  that  they  were  going  home ; 
one  after  another  of  them  took  the  crossing,  the  lambs 
scrambling  after.  Once  in  the  orchard  lane  they  would 
not  turn  again,  or  if  they  did  the  dogs  could  hold  them. 

The  lost  lamb  harried  Kenneth's  sense  of  responsibility. 
His  father,  he  knew,  expected  him  to  bring  all  the  flock  in. 
He  took  the  time,  then,  to  run  along  the  bank,  peering 
and  calling.  He  could  not  imagine  that  the  lamb  would 
be  dead  so  soon. 

He  saw  it  at  last,  washed  on  a  bar  on  either  side  of 


THE  FORD  17 

which  the  creek  slid  smoothly  over  hollows,  old  trout 
pools  before  the  waters  were  put  to  work  in  the  ditches. 
He  felt  the  pull  of  the  stream  as  it  closed  over  his  ankles. 
He  was  not  afraid,  —  all  the  children  at  Palomitas  could 
swim,  —  but  he  had  been  running  with  his  eyes  close  to 
the  ground;  he  had  not  noted  the  withdrawing  of  light 
from  the  sky.  Now,  as  he  looked  up  with  the  drowned 
lamb  in  his  arms,  he  saw  it  dark;  pale  darkness  like  ob 
sidian  above,  and  thick  blackness  around  the  foot  of  the 
Torr'.  Dark  seemed  to  flash  on  him  and  blind  him.  He 
slipped,  perhaps;  he  felt  the  hurrying  snake  of  Vine 
Creek  wrap  about  his  knees.  For  an  instant  the  waters 
went  over  him  .  .  .  and  then  the  roaring  of  it  in  his  ears 
was  silenced  by  a  shout  from  the  bank  above.  John 
Grant,  the  head  shepherd,  was  calling  to  him  from  the 
bottom  of  the  orchard  and  his  lantern  made  sudden  day 
again. 

Kenneth  scrambled  up  somehow  and  trotted  dripping 
along  the  trail  with  the  lamb  still  in  his  arms.  The 
blether  of  the  ewes  sounded  faintly  from  the  corral.  His 
day's  work  was  over;  he  had  a  faint  feeling  about  his 
middle  which  made  him  think  of  his  supper.  John  Grant 
swung  the  lantern  over  him  as  he  came  into  the  lane. 

"Well,  of  all  the—"  he  began;  he  left  off,  "flabber 
gasted,"  as  he  said  afterward  at  the  bunk  house. 

"I  had  to  get  this  one,"  Kenneth  explained  carefully, 
"down  by  the  old  swimming-hole.  .  .  .  Do  you  suppose 
my  father  will  whip  me?"  he  asked  after  an  interval  in 
which  John  Grant  appeared  to  have  trouble  with  his 
throat. 

"Whup  ye?  ...  Whup  ye?  ...  ye  little  .  .  ." 

But  they  had  come  plump  into  Mr.  Brent  running 


18  THE  FORD 

down  the  lane.  He  had  left  the  ditch  earlier  than  the 
men,  and  he  had  just  learned  that  the  water  had  not  been 
turned  back.  He  snatched  Kenneth  to  him,  lamb  and 
all.  The  boy  gave  a  shout. 

"It  beats  ...  it  beats!"  he  cried;  "I  can  feel  it."  The 
heart  under  his  hand  had  given  a  feeble  thump. 

" They're  all  in,  sor,"  Grant  was  saying,  "  't  is  not  two 
men  could  have  done  it."  Kenneth  began  to  cry.  He 
thought  it  was  because  he  could  not  feel  the  lamb's  heart 
again.  "He  wants  to  know  will  ye  whup  him,  sor?" 

Mr.  Brent  made  a  strange  noise  in  his  throat.  He  took 
the  limp  body  from  the  boy's  hand  and  turned  it  over 
to  the  head  shepherd:  "We'll  save  this  one,  too,"  he 
promised. 

There  was  nothing  more  said  as  they  walked  back 
through  the  orchard-scented  dusk.  Kenneth  held  fast  to 
his  father's  hand,  and  by  what  came  to  him  from  that 
warm  pressure  he  knew  that  somehow  the  question  of 
whipping  had  been  quashed.  At  the  door  his  mother 
came  through  the  square  of  light  to  meet  them;  he  had 
forgotten  about  his  mother.  She  could  never  forgive  any 
sort  of  blundering.  He  wanted  to  tell  her  at  once  that 
John  Grant  would  be  able  to  save  the  lamb,  but  he  could 
not  frame  a  beginning.  His  father  put  up  a  hand  quickly. 

"He's  dripping  wet,"  he  warned  her. 

She  sheered  off,  drawing  back  her  dress. 

"What  in  the  world  — "  The  light  streamed  from  the 
door  full  onto  him.  "Why,  the  boy's  drowned!"  She 
had  one  of  those  terrible  flashes  of  insight  which  all  they 
at  Palomitas  dreaded.  "You  turned  the  water  —  you 
put  the  child  to  a  man's  work  and  then  you  can't  even 
remember  .  .  "  She  snatched  at  her  son's  free  hand. 


THE  FORD  19 

Kenneth  stood  between  them,  as  he  knew  himself  too 
often,  miserably,  the  source  of  mutual  accusation.  He 
did  not  know  at  first  what  checked  the  flow  of  recrimina 
tion,  but  as  he  crossed  the  threshold  he  saw  that  it  was 
the  presence  of  the  tall  black  man  whom  he  had  last  seen 
riding  in  the  valley.  He  looked  even  taller  without  his 
chaps;  his  hat  was  off,  and  around  the  dead  blackness  of 
his  hair  ran  a  shining  crease  where  the  heavy  sombrero 
had  rested.  As  they  looked  at  each  other,  Kenneth  was 
aware  of  the  cast  eye  taking  him  in  on  its  own  account 
with  a  complete  and  sinister  intelligence. 


II 

WHETHER  it  was  due  to  company,  —  in  the  person  of  the 
dark  man,  —  or  the  mere  effect  of  putting  his  father  in 
the  wrong,  a  form  maternal  solicitude  often  took  with 
her,  Kenneth  was  disposed  to  make  the  most  of  his 
mother's  commiserating  frame,  of  the  nearness  of  her 
lovely  arms  as  she  helped  him  to  dress,  the  softness  6f  her 
bosom  and  the  faint  scent  of  her  hand  under  his  chin  as 
she  brushed  his  hair.  It  was  a  moment  of  dear  and  satis 
fying  intimacy,  the  more  so  as  he  felt  it  somehow  com 
mensurate  with  the  evening's  adventure,  —  of  which  the 
rescue  of  the  drowned  lamb  had  been  the  least  consider 
able  item,  —  and  he  prolonged  it  even  to  the  risk  of  the 
impatient  " There,  there!"  with  which  she  too  often  met 
his  flooding  sense  of  her  wonderfulness. 

He  was  swimming  in  that  sense  when  they  came,  with 
her  arm  about  his  shoulders,  some  minutes  later  into  the 
dining-room,  caught  up  to  appreciations  of  her  charm 
which  gave  him  for  once  the  sharp,  dividing  test  of  man 
ners  in  his  father's  rising  to  draw  her  chair  for  her,  and 
the  dark  man's  lumbering  up  after  his  host  and  dropping 
down  again  without  having  discovered  what  it  was  about. 
Between  the  Brents  and  their  guest  widened,  in  the  act, 
the  rift  of  social  distinction. 

Under  the  arm  of  Ah  Sen,  the  Chinese  boy  who  was 
helping  his  plate,  Kenneth  looked  across  to  Anne.  There 
passed  between  them  the  swift,  excluding  communica 
tion  of  childhood  which  swept  their  visitor  aside  and 
apart  into  the  limbo  of  their  mother's  "that  sort  of  peo- 


THE  FORD  21 


pie."  It  was  gone  in  a  flash  as  it  had  come;  the  overlying 
consideration  was  to  make  Ah  Sen  understand  that  in 
variably  and  on  all  occasions  one  wanted  a  great  deal  of 
gravy.  When  he  had  leisure  to  attend  to  it,  Kenneth  was 
aware  that  the  conversation  going  on  about  the  board 
afforded  his  mother  new  and  subtle  opportunities  for  pre 
senting  his  father  in  the  light  of  being  very  much  to 
blame  for  things  as  they  were.  She  was  leaning  forward 
a  little  to  bring  her  interest  to  bear  on  their  guest,  and 
Mr.  J  evens,  who  was  blowing  his  coffee  with  both  elbows 
on  the  table,  gave  her  the  whole  of  his  good  eye  which 
burned  like  a  black,  phosphorescent  hole  in  his  sallow 
countenance. 

"Literally  made  in  a  day,  ma'am,  fortunes  made  in  a 
day,"  he  assured  her.  He  waved  his  cup  as  though  it 
were  some  sort  of  fairy  wand  by  which  such  riches  came 
into  being. 

"But  where  so  many  are  made,"  —  Mr.  Brent  at 
tempted  to  stem  the  flood  of  fortunate  instances,  — 
"there  must  be  many  lost  also." 

Mr.  Jevens  waved  his  prestidigitating  cup  over  the 
objection. 

"Doubters,  doubters,"  he  protested;  "them  that  don't 
know  their  opportunity  when  they  see  it.  There  are 
people,"  -  Mr.  Jevens's  manner  admitted  that,  though 
it  was  nearly  impossible  of  belief,  it  was  so,  —"people 
who  need  a  lot  of  convincing  to  allow  themselves  to  be 
come  rich  —  there  was  Delancy,  he  did  n't  take  any  stock 
in  it  anyway  you  could  fix  it,  turned  down  offers  and  of 
fers.  Hogs  and  alfalfa  was  good  enough  for  him  any  day. 
Finally  comes  a  man  from  Santa  Anna.  He'd  been 
through  the  oil  boom  down  there  and  knew  what  was  what. 


22  THE  FORD 

' Never  mind/  says  he;  'you  keep  the  land  and  give  me 
sixty  per  cent  of  what  I  can  get  out  of  it.'  Mrs.  Delancy 
she  was  after  him.  '  What  harm  will  a  few  holes  do  your 
old  land  anyway? '  says  she.  'I  guess  your  alfalfa  don't 
reach  down  to  where  the  oil  is.'  So  Delancy  gave  in.  He 
made  them  bore  in  the  old  horse  corral  so 's  it  should  n't 
stop  the  seeding  any  —  and  now,"  —  Mr.  Jevens  flicked 
it  off  the  ends  of  his  long  fingers  which,  like  his  person, 
were  tipped  in  black,  —  "now  Mrs.  Delancy  and  the 
girls  are  in  Paris." 

Having  drawn  off  nearly  the  whole  of  his  coffee  at  a 
gulp,  Mr.  Jevens  put  down  the  cup  and  looked  about  for  a 
new  point  to  hang  his  relation  upon.  Mrs.  Brent  held  it 
out  for  him,  with  a  sharp  little  needle-like  dart  in  it,  such 
as  her  husband  too  often  winced  under.  It  appeared  even 
now  to  have  passed  over  Jevens  to  whom  it  was  addressed 
and  struck  at  its  accustomed  mark. 

"And  yourself,  Mr.  Jevens,  —  you've  not  let  all  these 
opportunities  by  you!" 

"Me,  ma'am!"  Jevens  coughed  modestly  behind  his 
hand.  "Not  having  either  land  or  capital,  not  to  say 
what  you'd  call  capital,"  —  he  had  the  air  of  taking  off 
his  hat  to  it,  —  "I  did  n't  expect  to  come  in  for  the  big 
prizes,  but  still  —  but  still — "  He  modestly  permitted 
his  manner  of  not  being  altogether  displeased  with  him 
self  to  say  what  it  would  to  them. 

"But  how  can  you  —  without  land  or  capital  —  much 
capital?"  Mrs.  Brent  played  with  her  salad  and  an  ap 
pearance  of  making  conversation  for  politeness. 

Ah  Sen  was  taking  away  the  plates  for  the  dessert, 
which  maneuver  appeared  to  give  Mr.  Jevens  some  con 
cern  as  to  whether  or  not  he  should  hold  on  to  his  knife 


THE  FORD  23 

and  fork.  He  changed  his  mind  at  the  last  moment  and 
rose  in  his  own  estimation  by  discovering  that  he  had 
done  the  correct  thing  in  letting  them  go.  It  lifted  him 
for  the  moment  to  a  plane  where  he  could  expand  gra 
ciously  to  his  hostess. 

"  Stocks,  ma'am,  stocks.  You  get  in  on  the  ground 
floor  when  the  company  is  formed,  and  you  sell  on  the 
rise  .  .  ."  He  finished  the  remark  directly  to  his  host. 
Mrs.  Brent  relinquished  the  subject  as  beyond  her. 
"  Twenty  thousand  ...  a  cool  twenty  thousand  .  .  .  and 
in  four  months."  Mr.  Jevens  fairly  spread  it  on  the  table 
for  them.  "It's  a  matter  of  knowing  your  opportunity 
when  it  comes  to  you!"  He  leaned  back  in  his  seat  and 
resisted  visibly  the  impulse  to  tuck  his  napkin  into  the 
front  of  his  shirt. 

Mrs.  Brent  looked  across  at  her  husband.  "You  see!" 
she  seemed  to  have  said. 

There  being  no  more  pudding  to  be  got  out  of  Ah  Sen 
on  any  persuasion,  Kenneth's  interest  wandered  from  the 
conversation  about  the  room  in  search  of  entertainment. 
It  was  a  low  L-shaped  room,  made  by  tearing  out  one  of 
the  thick  adobe  walls  in  the  old  Spanish  hacienda,  with 
great  smoky  fireplaces  and  narrow  slits  of  windows.  The 
walls  had  been  tinted  over  many  times  and  the  peeling 
of  the  various  coats  made  strange,  shadowy  shapes  of 
beasts  and  birds.  Secretly  Kenneth's  fingers  had  often 
helped  out  the  suggestion  of  his  quick  fancy.  Now  as  he 
looked  at  his  latest  effort,  under  the  flicker  of  the  lamp, 
he  was  reminded  of  the  drowned  lamb  bobbing  in  the 
rush  of  Vine  Creek,  neck  and  heels  together. 

He  wondered  if  John  Grant  had  been  able  to  save  it, 
and  decided  that  he  would  go  at  once  and  see.  He  caught 


24  THE  FORD 

Anne's  eye  with  the  thought  and  the  two  of  them  wriggled 
simultaneously.  He  felt  for  her  foot  under  the  table  which 
came  promptly  to  meet  his  and  shoved  vigorously. 
Anne's  chair  creaked  a  little  and  she  giggled. 

"If  you  can't  be  still,  children,"  their  father  com 
manded,  "  leave  the  table." 

They  got  up,  gravely  folding  their  napkins. 

"It  will  be  in  the  bunk  house,"  Anne  whispered  at  the 
door;  nothing  else  had  passed  between  them  and  no  more 
was  needed. 

There  was  a  fire  in  the  bunk  house  stove,  for  though  it 
was  the  end  of  February,  the  ewes  had  not  all  lambed  yet 
and  it  was  necessary  for  the  head  shepherd  to  be  up  with 
them  at  all  hours.  Nights  on  the  Torr'  were  chilly  often, 
on  into  April.  They  found  the  drowned  lamb  wrapped  in 
a  rag  of  old  blanket  under  the  stove;  it  blatted  freely  and 
moved  its  head. 

Anne  hunted  about  until  she  found  the  nursing-bottle 
which  was  kept  for  orphans,  or  for  unhappy  firstlings 
whose  mothers  refused  to  suckle  them.  When  they  had 
warmed  some  milk,  John  Grant  put  a  dash  of  brandy  in 
it.  The  men  were  still  sitting  about  the  dismantled  sup 
per-table  —  obviously  under  the  spell  of  the  sandy  man 
who  had  come  down  the  Draw  with  Mr.  Jevens.  Finding 
him  there  the  children  understood  that  the  two  strangers 
stood,  or  wished  to  be  thought  to  stand,  in  the  relation  of 
employer  and  employed.  Hank  Sturgis,  the  teamster,  sat 
opposite  the  sandy  man  and  played  the  part  of  chorus  to 
what  the  others  lapped  up  with  avidity. 

"How  did  they  first  come  to  know  it  was  there?" 
Hank  prompted  as  a  means  of  keeping  the  stream  flowing. 

"First  off  it  was  a  couple  of  fellows  had  been  around 


THE  FORD  25 

Santa  Anna,  when  the  boom  was  on  there;  they  was  fish 
ing  up  Cedar  Crick,  an'  they  see  what  was  considered 
signs.  So  they  had  an  expert  up,  sayin'  nothin'  to  no 
body." 

"Of  course!"  interpolated  the  chorus  to  a  circle  of 
appreciative  nods  - 

"And  the  upshot  of  it  is  they  got  six  wells  down, 
runnin'  a  thousand  barrels  a  day." 

"Them  owning  the  land,  I  take  it?"  Peters,  the 
ploughman,  contributed. 

' '  Ownin'  no  thin7 .  They  bought  it  off  en  the  fellow  what 
did  —  sayin'  nothin'  to  nobody  - 

"Well,  I  reckon  not,"  agreed  the  chorus  with  a  grin. 

"There  ain't  no  law  compellin'  a  man  to  shoot  off  his 
mouth  about  what  he  expects  to  make  out  of  what  he's 
buyin'  —  " 

"If  they  was,  where 'd  business  come  in,  that's  what 
I'd  like  to  know!"  Peters  demanded  of  the  company  in 
general.  Nobody  seemed  to  know  where  it  would,  indeed. 

"The  original  owners  held  it  for  sheep  pasture,  and 
they  was  tickled  to  death  to  get  twenty-five  an  acre  for 
it  —  and  now  she's  runnin'  a  thousand  barrels  a  day." 
The  sandy  man,  who  answered  to  the  name  of  Collins, 
was  as  pleased  as  though  he  had  done  it  himself. 

"What  they  talking  about?"  Kenneth  demanded  of 
Anne  over  the  lamb  which  had  managed  a  resuscitating 
wag  of  its  tail. 

"Coal  oil,  silly.  It  comes  out  of  the  ground." 

"Truly-truly!"  There  were  times  when  Anne's  infor 
mation  was  more  interesting  than  reliable. 

"Ask  father!  It's  like  an  artesian  well." 

Kenneth  revised  a  sketch  impression  of  barrels  running 


26  THE  FORD 

at  large  across  the  sheep  pasture,  by  what  he  recalled  of 
the  smooth,  pellucid  flow  of  the  Agua  Caliente  well. 

"What  I  want  to  know,"  demanded  Peters,  "is  where 
ye '11  be  when  Standard  Oil  catches  you?" 

"We  ain't  a-worryin'  about  that  until  it  does." 

"  And  then  't  won't  do  ye  no  good.  I  seen  old  John  D. 
onct,  and  if  you  think  he  ain't  got  his  little  eye  on  ye  — " 

The  lamb  had  finished  the  bottle  and  the  children, 
being  forbidden  to  linger  in  the  bunk  house,  wandered 
out  into  the  soft  dusk.  They  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the 
patio  under  the  Banksia  rose  starred  over  with  hard,  tiny 
buds.  Now  and  then  a  gust  of  air  wandering  down  from 
the  Torr'  brought  them  the  strong  smell  of  the  sheep  and 
the  rustle  of  young  leaves  in  the  chaparral.  Dan,  the 
house  dog,  got  up  from  his  bed  and  came  and  lay  down 
beside  them.  The  square  light  of  the  open  door  spread 
out  sharply  on  either  side  and  was  lost  in  the  pomegran 
ate  bushes. 

"I  say,  Ken,"  —  Anne  looked  at  him  with  a  mixture  of 
interest  and  a  determination  not  to  be  imposed  upon,  — 
"were  you  nearly  drowned?" 

Kenneth  wriggled  with  embarrassment,  working  a  toe 
into  the  hollow  of  the  other  foot. 

"I  guess  so,"  he  confessed. 

They  were  silent  for  an  interval  in  which  it  appeared 
they  had  somehow  slid  along  the  stoop  toward  one 
another. 

"Ken  ..."  very  softly. 

"Well,  what!" 

"I  would  n't  have  liked  it  if  you  had  been  drowned." 

"Oh,  shucks,"  said  Kenneth;  "I  would  n't  Ve  liked  it, 
neither." 


THE  FORD  27 

They  did  not  know  how  it  happened,  but  they  were  so 
close  together  that  it  seemed  quite  natural  for  them  to  be 
holding  hands  under  the  fold  of  Anne's  apron,  and  some 
thing  in  the  warm  clinging  of  Anne's  fingers  made  him 
think  of  his  mother. 

They  sat  so,  quietly,  until  their  father  came  out  and 
sent  them  off  to  bed.  He  was  looking  very  tired  after  his 
day  in  the  open,  as  he  often  did,  hiding  his  desire  for  sleep 
from  their  mother's  deep  irritation  with  it.  As  they 
kissed  her  now  for  good-night,  she  was  in  the  brightest  of 
her  evening  moods,  trying  as  she  did  on  so  many  occa 
sions  to  give  to  the  habitual  gathering  a  status  which  it 
had  n't  intrinsically  for  any  of  her  family,  and  succeeding 
now  in  it  only  by  the  help  of  Mr.  Jevens. 

The  light  had  been  moved  from  the  dining-table  to  the 
piano,  and  by  some  subtle  arrangement  the  whole  room 
had  taken  on  for  the  moment  the  air  of  being  not,  as  it 
actually  was  for  the  rest  of  them,  a  casual  and  transient 
retreat,  but  the  center  of  a  settled  existence.  To  whatever 
suggestion  of  this  sort  it  had  for  him,  Jevens  had  re 
sponded  handsomely.  He  sat  far  back  in  his  chair,  finger 
ing  his  swallow-tailed  mustache. 

"A  man'd  ought  to  know  when  to  quit,"  he  offered 
oracularly.  "I've  had  my  slice  of  luck,  and  now  I'm 
looking  for  a  tidy  ranch." 

"Oh  —  a  ranch!"  There  was  an  upward  note  in  their 
mother's  voice;  it  was  as  if  she  saw,  across  the  heads  of  the 
children  whom  she  kissed  without  remarking  what  she 
had  so  often  protested  Las  Palomitas  did  n't  offer  her  in 
any  case,  a  Way  Out.  They  were  so  accustomed  to  her 
talking  of  Palomitas  as  if  they  were  all  aching  to  get  rid  of 
it,  that  it  waked  in  them  not  even  a  habitual  resentment. 


28  THE  FORD 

J  The  room  in  which  Kenneth  slept  was  in  the  older 
adobe  part  of  the  ranch  house;  it  had  been,  when  Las 
Palomitas  itself  had  been  a  Spanish  hacienda,  a  chapel; 
his  dresser  was  backed  into  the  space  where  the  altar  had 
stood  between  the  little  niches  in  the  walls  for  saints. 
In  those  days  there  had  been  a  border  painted  on  the 
walls  in  primitive  reds  and  blues,  and  an  attempt  made, 
in  successive  whitewashings,  to  preserve  it  as  a  finish  to 
the  room  —  but  more  and  more  the  whiting  had  care 
lessly  encroached  until  now  the  scrolls  and  saw  teeth 
showed  faintly  here  and  there  like  the  traces  of  the  gay 
Spanish  life  that  had  gone  on  once  about  El  Torre  Blanco. 
Often  just  as  the  boy  would  be  dropping  asleep,  it  came 
out  for  him  quite  plainly.  He  made  it  out  now,  lying 
staring  awake  with  the  excitement  of  his  adventure  with 
the  sheep,  the  struggle  in  the  water,  and  the  arrival  of  the 
strangers. 

At  the  foot  of  his  bed  there  was  a  little  window  a  foot 
or  two  square,  which  had  never  had  a  glass,  but  was 
protected  by  a  pent  which  opened  up  and  down  like  a 
box  lid,  to  keep  out  the  rain.  It  was  open  now  upon  the 
flank  of  the  Torr'  where  the  wind  moved  on  the  leaves  of 
the  chaparral  as  upon  waves,  and  the  rounded  backs  of 
the  live-oaks  bulked  like  strange,  huge  creatures  come 
up  out  of  the  sea  to  graze.  In  the  mingled  light  of  the 
stars  and  a  paling  moon,  the  shadows  of  the  pepper  trees 
moved  on  the  faintly  illumined  wall,  and  the  face  of  the 
dark  man,  with  the  extra  intelligence  shining  in  his  mis 
directed  eye,  shaped  out  of  them.  Kenneth  recalled  Igna- 
cio's  characterization  of  him  as  un  diablo;  it  seemed  not 
unlikely.  By  association  he  recalled  along  with  it  some 
thing  which  had  not  been  in  his  mind  for  several  days. 


THE  FORD  29 

On  the  east  side  of  the  house  where  the  ground  was  too 
broken  for  cultivation,  the  camisal  came  down  to  the 
garden  fence.  There  was  a  little  gate  there  by  wThich  one 
went  along  past  the  cultivator  sheds  and  the  horse  stalls 
to  the  corrals,  without  the  trouble  of  opening  and  shut 
ting  heavy  gates.  The  space  cleared  for  this  convenience 
became  a  sort  of  limbo  where  rubbish  was  dumped  and 
small  farm  creatures,  that  died  of  themselves,  were 
buried.  Whatever  was  given,  the  camise  and  the  wild 
cucumber  took  and  converted  into  green  leaf.  In  two 
seasons  it  had  grown  quite  over  the  place  where  they  had 
buried  Shep,  the  herd  dog.  Shep  was  the  father  of  all  the 
herd  dogs  on  the  place,  a  very  patriarch  of  dogs;  he  had 
known  everything  that  it  was  necessary  for  a  sheep  dog 
to  know,  but  he  could  not  know  outside  his  kind.  On 
such  a  night  as  this  he  had  slipped  the  collar  which  he 
regarded  as  an  indignity,  and  eaten  of  the  poisoned  meat 
put  out  for  the  wild  cats  and  cougars  that  troubled  the 
Palomitas  flocks;  and  though  he  had  come  whining  up  to 
the  house  for  help  in  the  early  light,  there  was  nothing 
that  could  be  done  about  it.  The  blatting  of  the  flock 
going  out  to  the  morning  pastures  had  drawn  his  last  bark 
out  of  him,  and  he  had  become,  in  a  very  little  while,  the 
source  of  a  singular  and  secret  experience.  About  the 
time  Kenneth  was  able  to  pass,  without  a  choking  rush  of 
tears,  the  spot  where  Shep  had  been  buried,  there  began 
to  steal  over  him  the  suggestion  of  Shep's  being  still  alive 
there,  of  revisiting,  as  dead  men  were  said  to  do,  the 
scene  of  his  extremity. 

On  the  morning  that  the  old  dog  had  come  groveling 
with  pain  to  the  patio,  Kenneth  had  prayed  very  ear 
nestly  that  he  might  not  die,  and  now  by  a  queer  reversion 


30  THE  FORD 

of  the  faith  that  had  suffered  such  a  shock,  he  became 
convinced  that  the  dog's  life  was  really  going  on  there  in 
the  cleared  space  back  of  the  garden  and  the  corral.  It 
was  only  a  few  days  after  this  recrudescence  of  belief  that 
he  had  been  strolling  along  the  trail  there,  when  the 
thought  came  to  him,  "What  if  he  should  be  chasing  me 
now?"  And  in  an  instant  he  found  himself  running 
toward  the  gate  in  a  panic  of  fear.  He  knew  in  his  secret 
soul  that  nothing  could  be  more  unlikely,  but  he  could 
not  pass  that  way  again  without  thinking  about  it,  and 
anticipating  the  start  and  the  delicious  thrill  of  causeless 
terror.  It  grew  very  shortly  into  a  game  with  strict  ob 
servances.  When  he  came  by  the  sheep  corrals  as  far  as 
the  buckthorn  bush,  he  was  safe;  from  that  on  to  the 
garden 'gate  there  was  no  knowing  what  might  catch  him; 
but  the  moment  the  gate  clicked  to  behind  him  and  the 
bean  rows  began,  there  was  an  end  to  his  panic.  Of  real 
fear  he  knew  nothing  whatever,  of  night  or  darkness,  nor 
even  of  the  bears  and  cougars  which  still  by  night  visited 
the  sheepfolds  of  the  Torr',  but  he  would  not  for  worlds 
have  confessed,  even  to  Anne,  the  appetite  he  had  for  the 
sharp  clutch  of  his  breath  and  the  race  with  the  nameless 
dread  and  the  relief  of  safety. 

Now,  as  he  saw  the  tops  of  the  camisal  all  lifting  and 
fingering  with  the  wind,  the  sense  of  his  incompleted 
evening's  adventure  came  back  to  him  with  the  recollec 
tion  that  it  had  been  days  since  he  had  had  an  opportu 
nity  for  the  game  he  played  with  fear.  Suddenly  at  the 
thought,  he  slipped  out  of  bed  and  into  the  moccasins 
upon  which  he  had  compromised  between  his  own  pas 
sionate  wish  to  go  barefoot  and  his  mother's  insistence  on 
shoes.  He  let  himself  noiselessly  out  of  the  little  window. 


THE  FORD  31 

The  light  had  gone  out  in  the  living-room  at  last,  and 
there  was  nothing  astir  in  the  garden  but  the  bean  leaves 
flacking  against  their  poles.  Just  outside  the  gate  the 
Fear  waited  for  him.  It  gathered  immensity  with  the 
night.  The  thumping  of  his  heart  startled  him  with  the 
illusion  of  padding  feet.  By  the  time  he  came  to  the  end 
of  the  horse  corral  the  game  had  broken  bounds;  it  had 
all  the  night  and  the  windy  space  for  its  own;  it  would 
not,  he  was  dreadfully  aware,  leave  him  at  its  accustomed 
corner.  He  plunged  on,  tripped  and  fell.  It  was  upon 
him  now,  the  Thing  that  had  almost  snatched  him  hours 
before  in  the  rush  of  the  waters.  The  panels  of  the  horse 
corral  were  wide  apart.  Lying  there  in  the  discarded 
litter  where  he  had  fallen,  Kenneth's  courage  took  flight; 
with  a  little  clucking  noise  in  his  throat  he  rolled  under 
the  panels  and  lay  panting  while  the  Fear  went  by. 

Heaps  of  fresh  fodder  lay  about;  he  could  hear  from 
their  stalls  the  steady  munching  of  the  horses  .  .  .  and 
then  voices.  Mixed  with  the  darkness  and  his  state,  they 
took  on  terrifying  strangeness.  It  was  not  till  he  heard 
the  stirring  of  the  hay  on  the  other  side  of  the  heap  that 
he  identified  them  as  the  voices  of  Jevens  and  his  com 
panion.  They  had  come  out  to  their  camp  bed  which 
they  had  thrown,  no  doubt  at  their  host's  suggestion,  on 
the  hay.  Nobody  in  those  days  thought  of  offering  beds 
to  their  chance  visitors  any  more  than  of  refusing  them  a 
meal.  Kenneth  heard  their  preparations  for  the  night, 
and  then  the  voice  of  the  sandy  man,  pitched  low  for 
caution. 

"  How  'dye  make  out!" 

" They '11  bite.  The  madam's  hooked  already.  He 
ain't  so  easy." 


32  THE  FORD 

" He'll  loosen  up.  I  got  it  out  of  the  men  that  the  place 
is  mortgaged  for  all  it'll  stand*.  And  ranchin'  don't  agree 
with  her." 

"It  would  suit  my  plans  better,"  Jevens  calculated, 
"if  it  was  n't  mortgaged  so  much.  What's  the  good  of 
them  sellin'  if  they  come  out  with  nothin'  in  the  end 
of  it?" 

The  sandy  man  made  a  rusty,  chuckling  sound.  Ken 
neth  could  hear  how  he  laughed  by  the  rustle  of  the  hay. 

"It'll  be  a  reason  for  their  sellin'  to  us,  that  we  can 
afford  to  give  'em  something.  But  it's  got  to  be  pronto, 
pronto.  The  Old  Man  himself  will  be  gettin'  on  to  it." 

"Not  him.  He's  had  every  foot  of  the  range  experted, 
and  this  side  of  the  valley  don't  interest  him  none. 
What'd  you  do  with  them  samples?" 

"In  the  cayac."  The  sandy  man  stretched  himself 
audibly.  There  was  silence  for  a  time  and  then  a  remark 
broken  by  a  long,  yawning  sigh.  "  If  we  don't  get  no  more 
rain  than  we've  been  gettin',  he'll  be  eatin'  out  of  our 
hand  before  October." 

A  low,  steady  sound  answered  him;  the  dry  stems  of 
the  alfalfa  creaked  under  the  sandy  man  and  presently 
Jevens  took  up  the  sound  on  his  own  account,  improving 
upon  it  in  variety  and  volume. 

The  talk  had  hardly  interested  Kenneth,  but  the  cessa 
tion  of  it  did.  He  must  get  back  to  bed,  and  he  knew  he 
would  never  have  courage  to  attempt  the  camisal  path 
again  that  night.  He  meant  to  creep  on  to  the  sheep  cor 
ral  and  down  by  the  wagon  sheds  to  the  house  on  the 
other  side.  The  dogs  would  know  him. 

He  rolled  under  the  panel  noiselessly,  but  as  soon  as  he 
was  on  his  feet  again,  the  Fear  was  up  and  after  him.  It 


THE  FORD  33 

brought  him  into  the  sheep  corral  in  a  short,  dry  agony  of 
sobbing.  It  leaped  upon  him.  It  took  voice  at  last  and 
barked.  It  licked  his  face  .  .  . 

When  his  breath  came  back  again,  there  were  his 
father  and  John  Grant  with  the  lantern  bending  over 
him. 

"Boy,  boy  .  .  .  "  Kenneth  felt  arms  around  him  and 
yielded  himself  to  simple  crying. 

"He's  been  walking  in  his  sleep,  sor."  Grant  swung 
the  lantern  across  his  face.  Flora  the  dog  fawned  on 
him.  Kenneth  understood  that  his  father  and  Grant 
had  come  down  for  a  last  look  at  the  ewes,  more  than 
twoscore  of  which  had  not  yet  cast  their  lambs.  But  he 
did  not  try  to  have  them  understand  how  he  came  to 
be  there. 

"Poor  little  man,  no  wonder,  after  such  a  day."  Mr. 
Brent  took  off  his  coat  and  wrapped  it  about  the  boy's 
pajamas.  He  lifted  his  son  in  his  arms,  and  Kenneth's 
hand  went  about  his  shoulders. 

He  turned  up  his  face  as  the  men  moved  on  their  round 
and  saw  the  pale  remnant  of  the  moon  like  a  broken  boat, 
and  the  great  constellations  which  his  father  had  pointed 
out  to  him,  wheeling  to  their  stations.  The  night  wind 
blew  down  from  the  Torr'  in  a  steady  current.  It  was  all 
a  solemn  stillness  except  for  the  mutter  of  the  mothering 
ewes  and  the  click  of  a  wooden  bolt  sliding  into  place  .  .  . 
but  by  the  time  his  father  laid  him  in  his  own  bed,  he  was 
past  knowing  anything  about  it. 


Ill 

ON  clear  days  the  outlook  from  Palomitas  took  in  the 
flat  glimmer  of  the  marshes  in  which  the  river  lost  itself 
at  the  far  end  of  Tierra  Longa.  Always  one  had  the 
town  in  view  and  the  green-lined  squares  of  the  quarter- 
sections  which  fringed  the  creeks  between  the  Agua 
Caliente  fence  and  the  green,  meandering  smudge  the 
river  made  on  its  way  down  from  the  west  flank  of  the 
Torr'.  It  was  a  little  river,  but  swift  and  full,  beginning 
with  the  best  intentions  of  turning  mills  or  whirring  dyna 
mos,  with  the  happiest  possibilities  of  watering  fields  and 
nursing  orchards,  but,  discouraged  at  last  by  the  long 
neglect  of  man,  becoming  like  all  wasted  things,  a  mere 
pest  of  mud  and  malaria.  Not  but  that  it  did  its  best 
with  such  opportunities  as  were  offered  it.  The  Caliente 
Ditch,  taken  out  above  the  branding-pens,  watered  a 
great  green  oasis  of  alfalfa,  and  the  "Town  Ditch" 
turned  the  original  purlieus  of  a  Spanish  roadhouse  into 
a  green,  murmurous  hive  out  of  which  scarcely  any  be 
traying  roof  lifted  in  that  clear  air.  Far  below  all  these 
its  surplus  waters  made  a  glittering  hieroglyphic  between 
the  poisonous  greens  of  the  tulares.  In  wet  years  it  went 
on  beyond  these  and  reached  the  sea. 

It  was  one  of  the  certainties  to  which  Kenneth  seemed 
to  have  been  born,  that  the  figure  of  the  watery  waste 
spelled  much  to  his  father,  that,  in  moments  when  they 
faced  it  together,  as  they  did,  following  the  lamb-band 
past  the  Wash  of  Vine  Creek  next  morning,  seemed  won- 
drously  shared  between  them.  He  could  not,  of  course, 


THE  FORD  35 

understand  that  his  father  was  looking  at  that  almost 
untouched  valley  as  a  man  might  at  his  young  wife,  seeing 
her  in  his  mind's  eye  in  full  matronly  perfection  with  all 
her  children  about  her;  but  the  warmth  of  that  vision 
communicated  itself  to  the  hand  that  his  father  held  and 
expressed  itself  in  sundry  little  hops  and  skips  of  satis 
faction. 

It  was  at  breakfast  that  Mr.  Brent  had  announced  his 
intention  of  walking  with  Kenneth  and  the  lamb-band  as 
far  as  the  Wash.  By  adding  that  as  soon  as  school  be 
gan  he  would  put  one  of  the  Aguilar  boys  to  the  herding, 
he  had  precipitated  one  of  those  displays  of  Mrs.  Brent's 
hostility  to  Las  Palomitas  which  the  children  were  begin 
ning  to  feel  as  a  hidden  thorn  on  which  the  family  life 
might  be  impaled  at  any  moment. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  coldly  charged,  "why,  if  the  boy 
is  to  be  brought  up  as  a  sheep  herder,  you  bother  with 
school  at  all." 

"  There  ain't  going  to  be  no  school,"  Kenneth  had 
announced  inelegantly,  pleased  with  being  able  to  deliver 
a  piece  of  news  and  lit  the  same  time  somehow  range 
himself  on  the  side  of  his  father.  "The  Scudders  have 
sold  out.  Frank  told  me." 

The  item  had  been  overlaid  in  his  mind  by  the  adven 
ture  of  the  day  before;  however,  if  he  had  saved  it  with 
the  notion  of  bringing  it  out  with  the  greatest  possible 
effect,  he  could  n't  better  have  chosen  the  time.  His 
mother  laid  down  her  knife  and  fork,  let  them  fall  even 
with  a  little  clatter  on  her  plate. 

"Steven!  Steven!"  she  called  across  to  her  husband, 
almost  indeed  as  if  the  significance  of  the  incident  had 
driven  her  to  his  side.  There  had  been  a  five  months' 


36  THE  FORD 

school  insecurely  maintained  in  the  district  by  the  resi 
dence  in  it  of  the  required  number  of  children  of  school 
age.  The  Scudders  would  withdraw  six. 

"  Frank  said  his  father  offered  them  two  hundred  dol 
lars,"  Kenneth  eked  out  his  effect,  "and  they  swallered  it 
whole." 

" Swallowed,  you  silly!"  Anne  corrected,  dribbling 
syrup  on  her  cakes  in  a  negligent  ladylike  manner. 

"Well,  I  suppose  if  people  insist  on  living  in  a  place 
like  this,  that  is  what  they  must  expect."  v 

Kenneth  was  uncertain  whether  this  remark  of  his 
mother 's  referred  to  the  gustatorial  feat  of  the  Scudders 
or  to  the  settled  expectation,  that  sooner  or  later  every 
homesteader  would  find  himself  elbowed  out  of  it  by  a 
process  which,  however  indirectly,  could  be  traced  finally 
to  Frank's  father. 

Mr.  Jevens  chose  to  find  in  Kenneth's  announcement 
an  opportunity  for  sounding,  as  he  had  more  or  less 
obliquely  all  morning,  the  praises  of  a  more  favored 
region. 

"That's  one  thing  I  will  say  for  Summerfield"  —  it 
was  only  one  of  many  which  he  had  more  fulsomely  said 
-  "that  we  have  good  schools  there.  Our  schools  are  as 
well  organized  and  equipped  as  any  in  the  country."  His 
tone  had  a  slight  sing-song  which  to  one  more  sophisti 
cated  than  Mrs.  Brent  might  have  betrayed  the  quota 
tion  from  the  honorific  circulars  by  which  the  price  of 
real  estate  was  kept  up  in  towns  of  California  at  that 
period.  "Not,"  admitted  Mr.  Jevens,  "that  it  matters 
much  to  me,  but  I  can  understand  that  to  a  man  with  a 
family  —  "  He  put  his  elbows  on  the  table  and  blew  on 
his  coffee,  and  his  unofficial  eye  appeared  to  express  a 


THE  FORD  37 

degree  of  understanding  which  the  other  one  by  no 
means  corroborated. 

"I  hear  the  Old  Man  ain't  anyways  friendly  to  home 
steaders,"  he  let  out,  unable  to  resist  an  occasion  for  get 
ting,  even  in  a  small  way,  a  knife  into  the  character  of  the 
elder  Rickart. 

"Scudder  took  the  chances  a  man  must  take  on  unir- 
rigated  land."  Mr.  Brent  let  the  subject  drop  as  he  rose, 
excusing  himself  to  his  guest. 

Twenty  minutes  later,  as  Kenneth  stood  with  his 
father  watching  the  lamb-band  pour  steadily  down  the 
track  toward  Mariposa,  their  eyes  came  to  rest  instinc 
tively  on  the  Scudder  cabin,  close  up  against  the  Rickart 
fence  on  the  west  side  of  the  valley.  Young  trees  about  it 
spread  a  thin  shade  beyond  which  they  could  trace  the 
pale  green  plantation  of  winter  wheat,  which  already  took 
on  a  prophetic  tinge  of  yellow.  It  struck  all  at  once,  for 
the  boy  holding  his  father's  hand,  the  note  of  the  retarded 
season.  Under  the  spring  flush  which  had  followed  on 
two  or  three  really  satisfying  rains,  he  perceived  the  bare 
bones  of  drought. 

"Over  west  a  ways,"  which  was  all  their  visitor  had 
vouchsafed  of  the  direction  of  his  errand,  he  could  see 
Jevens  and  his  companion  disappearing  along  the  country 
road  toward  one  of  those  coastward  canons  within  which 
it  was  sometimes  possible  to  hear  as  in  a  shell  the  far-off 
roar  of  the  sea.  The  trail  of  dust  they  made  was  over 
matched  a  moment  later  by  one  that  sped  out  from  the 
lower  Caliente  gate  and  turned  up  toward  the  Torr',  too 
much  dust  for  a  team  to  have  stirred  up  at  that  time  of 
the  year.  It  puffed  out  from  under  the  wheels  and  settled 
thickly  in  the  lifeless  ah*. 


38  THE  FORD 

Kenneth  tugged  at  his  father's  hand. 

"Mr.  Burke  's  coming." 

Distracted  from  his  study  of  the  landscape  by  the 
name,  Brent  turned  his  attention  toward  the  opposite 
slope  where,  spread  out  like  a  map,  lay  the  headquarters  of 
Agua  Caliente,  an  inconsiderable  oasis  of  house  and  garden 
in  the  midst  of  a  great  hoof-beaten  space  of  branding- 
pens  and  breaking-corrals.  Across  it  the  buckboard,  with 
its  high  shining  top,  turned  into  the  Palomitas  road. 

Frank's  father  spent  very  little  time  at  the  ranch 
which  was  under  the  superintendence  of  a  former  fore 
man,  who  was  commonly  believed  to  be  maintained  in 
the  place  because  no  better  man  would  put  up  with  all 
that  Rickart  expected  of  his  subordinates.  Whatever 
Cornelius  Burke  himself  thought  of  his  qualifications,  he 
made  no  boast  of  them.  The  families  at  headquarters 
and  Palomitas  were  on  that  footing  which  disclosed  itself 
in  Burke's  inquiry,  when  he  had  at  last  come  up  with 
Brent  and  the  boy,  whether  Virginia  might  n't  come  over 
to  stay  for  a  few  days  while  her  mother  accompanied 
Burke  to  Summerfield.  The  boys  would  do  well  enough 
under  Frank's  tutor,  but  there  was  no  woman  about  with 
whom  a  girl  might  be  left,  a  girl,  who,  as  her  father  ad 
mitted  with  a  mixture  of  pride  and  excusing,  might  be  up 
to  almost  anything  in  the  interim. 

"The  Old  Man  sent  for  me,"  he  offered  in  explanation. 
"It's  about  this  oil  business."  He  referred  to  his  em 
ployer  as  the  Old  Man,  just  as  he  would  have  said  the 
Duke,  or  His  Excellency,  supposing  neither  title  to  have 
_.  been  convenable;  it  was  the  only  term  allowed  him  in  a 
democracy  to  express  a  state  of  affairs  which  the  demo 
cratic  theory  explicitly  disallowed. 


THE  FORD  39 

"So,"  Mr.  Brent  pricked  up  a  little,  —  "you  think 
there  is  really  something  in  all  that?" 

"Well,  the  Old  Man's  going  in  pretty  strong." 

"Oh,  for  him  there's  always  something  in  it.  I  mean 
do  you  think  they've  struck  a  permanently  producing 
field?"  .  .  . 

What  followed  was  very  much  the  sort  of  thing  that 
had  been  said  by  Jevens.  Burke,  whose  youth  had  been 
spent  in  the  oil  fields  of  Pennsylvania,  added  a  personal 
touch.  Kenneth  looked  the  team  over  and  adjusted  a 
buckle  tongue  which  he  found  hanging  loose;  the  sheep 
herded  by  the  dogs  would  be  by  this  time  safe  in  the 
meadow;  besides,  he  wished  to  hear  how  soon  they  were 
to  expect  Virginia.  His  father  came  around  at  last  to  a 
subject  of  more  immediate  interest. 

"Is  it  true  that  you've  bought  out  Scudder?" 

"The  Old  Man  told  me  to  close  him  out."  Mr.  Burke 
carefully  tried  the  lash  of  his  whip,  looking  down  at  it 
with  concentrated  attention.  "There's  no  sense  in  him 
losing  another  season  at  it." 

"He'd  have  proved  up  in  two  years  if  he'd  got  all  the 
water  that  was  coming  to  him.  ..."  Mr.  Brent  broke 
off  as  not  finding  it  worth  while  to  discuss;  everybody 
knew  that  before  Scudder  had  filed  on  the  land  there  had 
been  water  enough  from  Oak  Creek  to  have  maintained 
eighty  or  a  hundred  acres,  and  since  that  time  it  had  been 
mostly  turned  off  on  the  Agua  Caliente  pastures.  He 
took  up  the  phase  of  the  matter  in  which  Burke  as  a 
parent  might  be  interested. 

"It  will  break  up  the  school." 

"I'm  not  so  sure;  we  got  in  on  the  census  .  .  .  Anyway, 
this  young  man  that's  teaching  Frank,  we  can  fix  up 


40  THE  FORD 

something  with  him,  I  reckon."  Having  put  the  mat 
ter  in  this  hopeful  light,  the  Superintendent  of  Agua 
Caliente  was  disposed  to  include  the  unfortunate  home 
steaders  in  his  genial  optimism.  "  Scudder  's  lucky  to  get 
what  he  did.  It's  going  to  be  a  dry  year." 

"Going  to  be?  It  is!  Look  at  that!" 

A  flock  of  quail  ran  neck  and  neck  across  the  orchard 
lane  with  soft  twitterings  and  cooings;  a  moment  later 
they  were  heard  in  the  barley  with  their  warning  Cuidado 
.  .  .  Cuidado! 

Brent  shook  his  head  over  it.  "They've  not  begun  to 
mate,  and  the  grain  is  turning  yellow." 

"Well,"  —  Burke  was  judicious,  — "we've  all  of  six 
weeks  yet.    If  it  was  to  begin  now  and  rain  hard  for  two 
or  three  weeks,  it  would  save  us." 
k   "Yes,  it  would  just  save  us." 

Burke  gathered  up  his  reins  and  turned  the  wheels  for 
his  neighbor  to  mount  to  him.  "About  those  calves  now 
.  .  ."  he  was  beginning. 

Kenneth  saw  there  would  be  no  more  for  him  in  the 
conversation.  He  set  out  for  the  meadow.  John  Grant 
had  given  him  a  shepherd's  crook  that  morning,  fitted 
down  to  a  stock  just  the  length  for  him;  the  curved  iron 
reached  a  foot  or  more  higher  than  his  head.  The  lower 
end  also  was  shod  with  iron,  and  he  used  it  now  as  an 
alpenstock,  digging  it  into  the  soft  earth  and  taking  long, 
skipping  jumps  with  it.  Suddenly  ahead  of  him,  under 
the  mirage-breeding  mist,  he  saw  close  to  the  ground  a 
single  brilliant  flame,  orange  crimson;  it  moved  a  little 
and  flicked  in  the  wind  like  a  flame.  The  beauty  of  it 
pricked  him  still  for  an  instant,  then  he  gave  a  shout. 
In  a  moment  he  had  snapped  it  short  on  its  translucent 


THE  FORD  41 

stem.  It  was  the  first  of  the  golden  poppies  that  spring 
up  so  plentifully  after  rain;  as  he  fastened  it  in  his  hat, 
he  was  quite  and  completely  happy. 

Virginia  came  over  that  evening,  with  her  things  in  a 
suitcase,  but  it  was  not  until  the  third  day  of  her  stay  that 
the  children  were  together  again.  There  had  been  a  mo 
ment  when  Frank  had  swept  them  all  into  the  common 
tribal  impulse  with  a  proposal  to  ride  over  to  the  shearing- 
sheds  at  Agua  Caliente,  an  impulse  which  had  been  some 
how  mysteriously  checked  by  a  swift  assumption  of 
superiority  on  the  part  of  Anne,  and  a  disposition  of  the 
two  girls  to  walk  apart  with  their  arms  about  each  other 
and  their  chins  in  the  air.  Frank  thought  Mrs.  Brent 
might  be  at  the  bottom  of  it;  Kenneth  set  it  down  to 
the  general  unaccountability  of  girls.  But  the  last  after 
noon  before  Virginia's  parents  came  back  from  Summer- 
field,  John  Grant  came  down  to  Mariposa  to  examine  the 
condition  of  the  feed  and  set  Kenneth  free  for  the  whole 
of  the  afternoon.  About  four  o'clock  they  found  them 
selves,  including  the  little  Romeros,  who  must  have  had 
the  same  sort  of  prescience  for  things  going  on  at  Palo- 
mitas  as  the  buzzards  floating  in  the  thin  blue  above  the 
valley  had  for  their  particular  prey,  gathered  at  the 
spring.  Peters  was  cutting  out  the  brush,  which  made 
a  cover  for  wild  cats  and  an  occasional  lynx  that  preyed 
upon  the  poultry  yards. 

The  spring  was  a  deep,  cool  fountain  from  which 
water  was  piped  for  use  in  the  house,  and  lay  high 
enough  on  the  Torr'  to  show  them  the  great  green  flank 
of  it,  stirred  by  the  wind,  wavering  like  the  fur  on  some 
wild  creature's  coat. 

The  girls  had  arrived  in  time  to  stand  out  with  Peters 


42  THE  FORD 

for  a  buckthorn  in  which  mourning  doves  had  made  their 
nest.  It  was  all  one  to  Peters  if  they  could  fix  it  with  their 
Pa.  Anne  thought  they  could.  The  little  Romeros  quite 
approved  of  the  exemption,  since  they  meant  to  come 
back  and  rob  the  nest  themselves  the  following  day. 

Anne,  however,  forestalled  them.  "If  there's  a  single 
one  of  those  eggs  missing,"  she  warned,  "I  shall  know 
who  did  it." 

Gringos  undoubtedly  carried  things  of  this  sort  too 
far. 

Frank  and  Kenneth  found  them  all  sitting  on  the 
stacked,  springy  brush;  the  air  was  full  of  the  damp 
smell  of  the  spring  and  the  crushed  fern.  Now  and  then 
startled  rabbits  ran  out  of  the  brush  under  Peters's  bill, 
and  the  little  Romeros  dashed  wildly  after.  They  fell  all 
aheap  in  the  middle  of  the  clearing,  to  their  amazement 
with  the  rabbit  under  them.  Pedro  held  it  out  by  the  ears 
kicking  and  squealing.  Anne  cried  out  at  them. 

"Drop  it!"  Frank  ordered. 

Pedro  took  the  rabbit  under  his  coat,  —  what  passed 
for  a  coat,  —  and  made  up  his  mind  that  if  Frank  tried 
any  more  of  that  on  him,  he  would  n't  understand  Eng 
lish. 

"They'll  only  torment  it  when  we  aren't  looking," 
Virginia  protested.  "Send  them  away." 

"Be  off!"  Frank  was  magnificent.  "We  don't  want 
any  of  you  kids  here  anyway." 

Ignacio  Stanislauo  took  his  cue.  He  waved  his  tribe 
away. 

"Get  out,  you!  Vamose!  Bastanta!" 

The  younger  Romeros  burned  in  speechless  indigna 
tion;  it  appeared  that  'Nacio  had  turned  traitor,  but  they 


THE  FORD  43 

were  too  used  to  obeying  him.  Besides,  if  anything  more 
was  said  they  might  be  deprived  of  the  rabbit.  They 
moved  off  by  one  of  the  threadlike  trails  disappearing  in 
the  camise,  by  which  the  woodland  visitors  came  down 
to  the  spring  to  drink. 

"  Children  are  so  cruel,"  Virginia  offered  superiorly  to 
the  company. 

The  Burke  boys,  who  had  come  over  to  visit  their  sis 
ter,  concealed  their  disgust.  At  any  price  it  was  worth 
being  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  Virginia.  They  began 
to  run  in  the  clearing,  jumping  over  one  another  very 
much  as  the  rabbits  leaped  in  the  runways,  but  at  every 
leap  and  tumble  they  came  nearer  to  cover.  Presently 
they  disappeared  in  it,  and  a  little  later  they  were  heard 
signaling  the  Romeros  by  low,  cautious  whistles  in  the 
chaparral.  The  line  of  cleavage  had  been  effected  at  last. 
It  was  a  natural  limit  of  interest  and  outlook. 

The  oldest  Romero  made  a  brave  effort  to  maintain 
himself  in  the  new  grouping.  He  came  sidling  toward  the 
girls  with  something  hollowed  mysteriously  in  his  palm. 

"Win-liah-topeek"  he  announced,  as  though  it  had 
been  a  word  of  power.  They  looked  with  solemnity  and 
saw  lying  there  an  inch  or  two  of  fleshy  root  and  a  small 
transparent-petaled  flower.  "My  mother  tole  me  —  eet 
ees  a  sign,"  he  nodded  wisely. 

"A  sign  of  what,  'Nacio?"  Virginia  was  always  im 
mensely  taken  with  his  retailed  bits  of  Indian  lore. 

"  Un  ano  malo!"  he  wagged  impressively. 

"A  bad  year!  But  we  know  that  already."  The  chil 
dren  felt  slightly  imposed  upon.  "Does  n't  your  mother 
know  something  better  than  that?" 

"Oh,  but  thees  ees  ver',  ver'  bad  year;  thees  sign  he 


44  THE  FORD 

only  come  when  my  mother  leetle  .  .  .  leetle  ..."  He 
tried  a  sliding  scale  on  his  person  as  his  sense  of  the  re 
moteness  of  the  period  increased.  "Then  all  the  creeks 
go  dry,  all  the  deer  she  go  —  pasear  —  up  the  mountain, 
all  the  cattle  die  ...  See,  eet  ees  begin."  He  tossed 
the  fragment  of  win-hah-topeek  dramatically  toward  the 
vault  above  the  valley  where  the  black  specks  of  buzzards 
hovered  over  the  moving  flocks,  sliding  in  and  out  of  the 
distance  on  invisible  wires. 

Kenneth  began  to  count. 

"Four,  five  —  seven." 

"Over  by  the  Gordo,"  Virginia  pointed  out. 

"Seven  on  Mariposa  Creek,"  Frank  announced;  "but 
that 's  where  John  Grant  lost  a  ewe  yesterday."  Never 
theless,  he  looked  quite  soberly  with  the  others  down  the 
long  groove  between  the  hills,  turning  fawn  and  tawny 
where  it  should  be  green.  From  the  edge  of  the  chaparral 
they  could  hear  the  cry  of  the  unmated  quail. 

"  Cuidado!  Have  a  care,"  translated  Ignacio  Stanislauo 
triumphantly.  "He  knows.  Cuidado!"  He  returned  the 
whistled  warning. 

Frank  rolled  over  and  lay  staring  up  at  the  light  with 
drawing  from  the  sky. 

"Oh,  well,  what's  the  diff.?  I'm  going  down  to  the 
coast  in  August,  my  father  promised  me.  I  shan't  see 
any  of  it." 

Anne  looked  down  at  him  in  measured  indignation. 

"If  things  were  starving  I'd  care  —  whether  I  had  to 
look  or  not.  I  can  look  with  my  mind  just  as  well  as  I  can 
with  my  eyes." 

"Oh,  of  course-  Frank  corkscrewed  himself  half 
into  a  sitting  posture.  "Of  course  I  did  n't  mean  — " 


THE  FORD  45 

"And  I  would  look,"  Anne  finished  with  her  chin 
cupped  in  her  hands.  "Even  if  I  couldn't  help  it,  I'd 
look.  I  would  n't  pretend  I  did  n't  know  what  was  go 
ing  on." 

Frank  changed  the  subject  to  one  which  permitted  the 
implication  of  reproach  on  his  side. 

"Why  did  n't  you  come  to  the  sheds  the  other  night  ?  " 

"Her  mother  would  n't  let  her."  Virginia  was  explicit. 
"She  thinks  we  are  too  old  to  play  with  boys." 

In  the  pause  which  ensued  they  accepted  it  after  their 
several  fashions;  they  would  no  doubt  have  found  it  out 
presently  for  themselves. 

"I  suppose  we've  just  got  to  grow  up,"  Virginia 
sighed;  then  her  facile  mind  took  flight.  "What  you 
going  to  be?"  she  demanded. 

Kenneth  had  no  doubt  whatever.  He  should  stay  right 
on  at  Palomitas  and  have  more  sheep  than  anybody;  but 
Virginia  convicted  him  of  a  want  of  imagination. 

"I  shall  go  everywhere,"  she  announced,  "and  I  shall 
tell  people  what  to  do.  I  'm  going  to  have  them  be  kind 
to  the  poor  and  not  let  there  be  any  little  children  crippled 
—  or  anything."  Then,  on  reflection,  as  if  she  did  n't  see 
exactly  where  she  came  in  herself,  added,  "perhaps  I 
shall  act  in  a  theater  and  have  them  throw  flowers  at 


me." 


The  brilliance  of  this  prospect  took  their  breath  away. 
It  was  not  dimmed  even  by  Frank's  declaration  that  he 
meant  to  be  rich. 

"Are  n't  you  rich  now?"  Anne  was  interested. 

"Not  like  I'm  going  to  be.  I'm  going  to  do  like  my 
father;  I'm  going  to  get  after  some  of  those  fellows  down 
there  —  "he  waved  his  hand  in  the  cloud-shadowed  direc- 


46  THE  FORD 

tion  where  the  city  lay,  —  "and  I'm  going  to  have  them 
running." 

Kenneth  had  a  moment  of  wishing  he  had  chosen  this 
for  himself;  but  Anne  pricked  the  bright  bubble  in  a  way 
she  had. 

"  They'd  be  running  away  from  you!11 

"Oh,  I'll  have  them  scared  all  right."  Frank  lay  back 
on  the  brush  and  crossed  his  legs,  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets,  as  he  had  seen  his  father  do. 

"Well,"  said  Anne,  "I  think  it  would  be  a  lot  more  fun 
to  have  them  running  with  you." 

"Yes ! "  cried  Virginia,  "like  a  soldier,  don't  you  know." 

The  imaginations  of  all  of  them  flamed  up. 

Kenneth  looked  at  her  admiringly.  "I  guess  I'll  be 
that  kind,"  he  chose  again. 

"Oh!  and  I'll  inspire  you  — like  .  .  .  like  .  .  ."  Vir 
ginia  cast  about  in  her  mind  for  an  example;  but  Frank 
cut  her  short. 

"It  was  Anne  thought  of  it  first,"  he  insisted. 

Nobody  inquired  about  the  future  of  Ignacio  Stanis- 
lauo;  perhaps  he  knew  as  well  as  they  what  was  fore 
doomed  in  his  blood. 

Anne  had  to  be  persuaded  a  little.  At  last  she  con 
fessed. 

"I'd  like  to  keep  house  and  have  children." 

"Ho-ho!"  Kenneth  began  to  laugh;  he  had  picked  up 
somewhere,  but  he  could  n't  say  where,  a  faint  savor  of 
ribaldry  as  proper  to  such  an  admission. 

Frank  kicked  out  at  him. 

"Shut  up,"  he  said.  "That's  what  women  are  for." 

"Not  all,"  Virginia  held  out.  " I 've  seen  in  the  papers, 
actresses  are  always  Miss." 


THE  FORD  47 

"Much  you  know  about  it!"  But  Frank  would  not 
explain  himself  further,  chiefly  because  he  could  n't. 
He  had,  in  his  last  stay  in  the  city,  clutched  at  the  skirts 
of  knowledge  but  not  of  understanding. 

Kenneth  had  left  off  laughing  to  look  at  his  sister  in 
the  light  of  Frank's  acceptance  of  her  destiny.  So  Anne 
was  to  be  a  woman.  Somehow  he  had  never  thought  of 
her  as  anything  but  Anne.  He  was  struck  now  as  he  had 
never  been  before  with  the  likeness  to  her  mother  in  the 
curve  of  her  cheek  and  the  faint  swell  of  her  bosom  under 
her  gingham  dress.  She  was  not  pretty  as  Virginia  was, 
her  eyes  were  too  pale  and  the  thick  hair,  drawn  smoothly 
on  either  side  her  face,  was  ash-colored,  but  he  saw  how 
inevitable  it  was  that  she  must  turn  out  a  woman. 

They  were  all  quiet  as  they  trailed  along  after  Peters 
to  the  edge  of  the  camisal.  At  the  upper  gate  of  the 
potrero  they  heard  the  first  gong  for  supper.  Virginia 
measured  the  distance  across  it  with  her  eyes. 

" First  one  to  the  gate's  the  winner!"  she  cried. 

Toe  and  toe  she  set  off  with  Kenneth  and  Ignacio. 
When  they  brought  up  breathless,  all  in  a  heap  against 
the  bars,  they  turned  to  see  Anne  and  Frank  far  behind 
them  walking  sedately. 

"They  never  even  started-  '  Kenneth  began;  but 
Virginia  had  n't  noticed  him.  After  one  look  back  she 
began  to  walk  off  toward  the  house  with  her  chin  up  as  if 
nothing  in  the  world  was  further  from  her  thought  than 
racing. 


IV 

Two  singular  and  contradictory  impressions  mixed  with 
Kenneth's  earlier  years  to  make  up  for  him  the  sum  of 
associative  ideas  called  Home.  One  was  the  feeling  he  had 
about  the  little  room  where  he  slept.  It  was  as  safe  to  him 
as  its  hole  to  a  fox.  The  deep  adobe  walls,  the  low  roof, 
the  pepper  tree  scratching  comfortably  about  its  eaves, 
more  than  all  else  the  maternal  flank  of  the  Torr'  glimpsed 
from  its  little  window  as  from  a  half-opened  lid,  had  for 
him  the  absolute  quality  of  refuge.  He  came  into  peace 
there,  distilled  delicately  as  from  a  vase  that  has  once 
held  ambergris,  and  dropped  as  lightly  into  sleep  as  souls 
into  the  faith  that  for  so  long  had  had  its  daily  crisis  be 
tween  the  niches  in  the  wall. 

The  other  reached  him  from  without,  through  the  thin 
partition  of  the  door  that  formerly  had  opened  from  it  to 
his  parents'  room.  It  was  boarded  across  now,  and  with 
a  chintz  curtain  its  deep  recess  served  as  a  closet  for  his 
clothes,  but  never  for  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  prob 
ably  intended,  to  cut  him  off  from  their  private  dissat 
isfactions.  It  was  close  to  the  head  of  his  bed,  and  often 
at  night,  sometimes  long  into  it,  he  could  hear,  like  the 
wearing  of  machinery  left  to  run  down  unattended,  the 
guttering  end  of  his  mother's  empty,  unappreciative 
days.  It  had  become  so  early  part  of  a  great  natural  se 
quence  that  the  free,  rich  life  of  Palomitas  was  empty  for 
his  mother,  that  he  had  never  attempted  to  account  for 
it.  He  supposed  it  must  be  so  with  ladies.  He  had 
found  himself  even  with  a  kind  of  tender  commiseration 


THE  FORD  49 

for  her  in  a  situation  so  little  in  accord  with  her  disposi 
tion.  It  drove  him  from  his  father  at  times  to  perceive 
in  him,  as  he  was  sure  she  did,  the  source  of  her  dis 
comfiture,  and  drove  him  back,  with  a  sense  of  their 
mutual  incrimination,  in  liking  heartily  what  a  lady  so 
beautiful  and  charming  as  his  mother  so  completely 
disliked. 

For  they  were  all  of  them,  except  Mrs.  Brent,  wholly 
and  absorbingly  interested  in  what  went  on  at  Palomitas. 
Life  for  them  was  lived  out  of  doors;  it  was  only  lately 
that  the  children  had  begun  to  be  embarrassed  by  her 
demand  that  it  should  be  in  a  degree  lived  about  the  sup 
per-table  or  under  the  lamp.  Days  for  her  were  to  be  got 
through  somehow;  they  were  the  excuse  for,  or  the  an 
noying  interruption  to,  the  real  performance  on  which, 
for  their  mother,  the  curtain  seemed  never  quite  to  go 
up.  There  was  something  expected  of  them  which  they 
were  helpless  to  afford  her,  something  vaguely  indicated  to 
them  by  the  obligation  of  dressing  for  the  evening  meal,  of 
playing  the  piano  as  she  was  teaching  Anne  rather  f  utilely 
to  do,  and  particularly  of  talking. 

"She  wants  us,"  Anne  had  figured  it  out,  "to  be  com 
pany." 

There  was  very  little  of  that  at  Palomitas  to  judge 
by,  but  certainly  company,  under  the  stimulus  of  their 
mother,  always  talked.  In  their  small  way  the  children 
had  undertaken  to  rise  to  an  expectation  which  their 
father's  manner  ever  permitted  them  to  think  of  as  un 
warranted,  but  the  trouble  was  that  they  had  talked. 
At  the  Ford,  by  the  lambing-corral,  they  had  met  the 
day's  occasion  with  its  appropriate  comment  or  debate. 
But  where,  indeed,  —  Anne  put  the  matter  succinctly 


50  THE  FORD 

for  them  both,  —  "when  you  are  n't  doing  anything,  is 
the  talk  to  come  from?  " 

Their  mother,  at  any  rate,  found  an  unfailing  stream 
of  it  which,  after  the  house  was  shut  and  the  children  in 
bed,  ran  on  in  a  kind  of  fretful  gurgle  behind  the  walled- 
up  door  of  Kenneth's  room.  It  seemed  to  have  taken  on 
a  new  and  sharpening  impetus  after  the  return  of  the 
Burkes  from  Summerfield.  They  had  come  driving  down 
the  Draw  after  a  week's  absence  with  a  distinct  and  dis 
tinctly  maintained  air  of  having  been  in  the  great  world, 
to  set  up  in  this  quiet  cove  of  Tierra  Longa  an  eddy  of 
its  tremendous  stir.  Things  were  doing  out  there,  things 
which,  even  with  his  salaried  position  and  perquisites,  Mr. 
Burke  thought  it  a  pity  a  man  should  miss,  things  which 
he  permitted  them  to  guess  rather  than  directly  said,  he 
had  been  sent  for  in  order  that  he  should  n't  miss.  Treas 
ures  were  being  pumped  up  out  of  the  earth,  trips  to 
Europe,  houses  in  the  city;  better  still,  enlarged  oppor 
tunities  for  involving  yourself  in  the  stir,  for  making,  to 
a  degree,  a  stir  on  your  own  account. 

"  Makes  a  man  feel  like  he  was  in  things,"  he  confessed, 
" money  passing  like  that;  even  if  it  does  n't  stick  to  you 
none,  you  feel  it  circulating."  He  seemed  freshened  and 
livened  by  the  touch;  he  even  handed  it  about  for  the 
moment  to  his  hearers. 

"  You  mean  to  tell  us,  then,  that  none  of  it  did  stick  to 
you?"  Mrs.  Brent  was  watching  him,  Kenneth  thought, 
almost  as  if  she  expected  to  detect  it  somewhere  about  his 
person. 

Cornelius  Burke  was  a  tall,  bony  man  with  the  blue, 
black-fringed  Irish  eyes  which  he  had  managed  to  pass 
on  to  Virginia  without  implicating  her  in  the  nose  and 


THE  FORD  51 

chin  between  which  a  Fenian  conspiracy  was  deferred  by 
a  bristling,  square-cut,  black  mustache.  His  admiration 
for  Mrs.  Brent  as  a  fine  figure  of  a  woman  was  just  modi 
fied  by  resentment  at  her  restless  maternal  anxiety.  It 
was  an  implication  of  Brent's  inability  to  bring  his  affairs 
to  a  successful  issue,  which  as  Brent's  friend  he  was  un 
willing  to  admit.  He  dropped  back,  at  her  question, 
from  neighborliness  to  his  character  of  cautious  agent. 

"  You  have  to  be  in  the  game  for  that  .  .  .  those  yellow 
birds  don't  perch,  I  reckon,  except  where  there's  bird 
lime  about.  Not  but  what  I'd  be  above  taking  a  whirl  if 
it  came  my  way,"  he  relaxed,  remembering  Virginia. 

"  You  think,  then,  that  it's  a  sound  development,  that 
it  will  hold  out  as  it 's  begun?  "  Brent  questioned.  "  These 
things  have  a  way  of  slumping." 

Burke  grinned.  "It  won't  slump  yet  a  while,  I  can  tell 
you.  The  Old  Man's  in  deep.  Deep." 

Although  they  might  have  questioned  its  legitimacy, 
no  one  in  his  senses  would  have  doubted  the  financial  fat 
ness  of  any  venture  so  long  as  the  Old  Man  remained  in 
it.  And  the  extent  to  which  he  was  "in"  was  proclaimed 
very  loudly  within  the  week  by  the  "Summerfield  Clar 
ion,"  and  in  Tierra  Longa  more  personally  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  not  discouraged,  as  his  habit  was,  the  favored 
ones  in  his  employ  from  taking  stock  in  the  enterprises 
which  circulated  in  his  name,  but  even  condescended  so 
far  as  to  indicate  the  companies  in  which  he  deemed  it 
advisable  stock  should  be  taken.  He  had  spread  at  last, 
as  Tierra  Longa  had  lingeringly  hoped,  as  it  believed  he 
might  so  easily  and  humanly  do,  the  mantle  of  his  finan 
cial  competency  over  their  insufficiencies.  It  produced  in 
certain  of  the  community  a  kind  of  pocket  loyalty,  a  dis- 


52  THE  FORD 

position  to  find  in  the  methods  by  which  Agua  Caliente 
had  been  compacted,  out  of  two  or  three  loose-titled 
Spanish  grants,  into  one  of  the  best  cattle  ranches  in  the 
country,  nothing  more  reprehensible  than  the  acumen 
upon  which  the  success  of  their  investments  now  hung. 
Was  n't  the  very  relentlessness  with  which  he  had  hemmed 
in  and  starved,  and  at  the  psychological  moment  finally 
bought  out  settlers  in  the  adjacent  grazing-lands,  the  best 
of  evidence  that  he  would  be  able  to  maintain  his  interests 
in  the  oil  field?  It  was  all  a  question  of  whether  you  were 
against  the  Old  Man  in  this  game,  or  with  him.  If  until 
now  you  had  found  yourself  in  the  first  case,  you  could  at 
least  measure  by  it  what  might  be  coming  to  you  in  the 
second,  if,  as  seemed  wondrously  the  fact,  he  had  decided 
to  let  you  "in"  on  his  oil  ventures.  All  down  the  valley 
farms,  and  in  the  hill  coves  from  which  he  had  not  yet 
successfully  dislodged  the  preemptors,  there  ran  the  weld 
ing  warmth  which  money  makes,  passing  from  hand  to 
hand.  At  Palomitas  it  was  felt,  however,  that  they  were 
unfairly  and  inexplicably  out  of  it. 

"We  always  will  be,  as  long  as  you  insist  on  living  in  a 
place  like  this,"  Mrs.  Brent  would  protest  to  her  husband 
in  the  biting  hours  when  she  worked  off  against  him  the 
energies  undischarged  by  tasks  which  she  made  it  a 
peculiar  merit  not  to  do.  "  Though  I  do  live  in  the  coun 
try,  I  don't  have  to  be  country,"  she  had  professed  to  Mrs. 
Burke.  "A  woman  has  to  keep  up  a  standard;  she  has 
only  herself  to  thank  if  she  lets  herself  down."  And  how 
beautifully,  by  the  aid  of  paper  patterns  and  the  mail 
order  catalogues,  she  had  kept  up,  she  was  as  willing  to 
have  known  as  to  be  commiserated  on  the  extent  to  which 
her  family  were  n't  able  to  keep  up  with  her. 


THE  FORD  53 

"I  don't  see,"  she  would  offer  to  her  husband's  heavy- 
eyed  attention,  "what  we  are  living  here  for,  if  it  is  n't  to 
find  ourselves  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  such  op 
portunities  when  they  come  along.  And  how  can  we  when 
all  we  get  by  living  here  is  just  living?" 

"It's  all,  my  dear,  we'd  get  by  living  anywhere,  is  n't 
it?"  Brent  had  ventured. 

"Oh!  if  you  call  this  living!  It's  merely  being  alive. 
And  the  children;  I'd  like  to  know  what  they  are  to  get 
out  of  it.  You  never  seem  to  think  of  them.  Not  even  a 
decent  school." 

She  had  him  there,  as  Mr.  Brent's  silence  seemed  to 
imply.  He  wanted  the  best  for  his  children. 

"Even  if  you  have  n't  any  compunction  about  throw 
ing  my  life  away,"  she  followed  up,  "you  might  think  of 
Anne!  I  suppose  I  can't  even  take  her  to  the  coast  this 
year." 

"If  you  did,"  he  reminded  her,  "she  wouldn't  in  that 
case  have  got  any  schooling  either." 

"Oh,  they'll  get  nothing  whatever,  either  of  them.  I 
suppose  I'll  have  to  make  up  my  mind  to  that!" 

He  had  nothing,  however,  to  offer  her  but  the  hope, 
dulled  by  much  handling,  of  "getting  things  straightened 
out,"  of  "seeing  his  way"  to  something  which  would  be  a 
little  more  commensurate  with  what  she  felt  herself  so 
richly  entitled  to.  He  was  n't,  if  you  came  down  to  cases, 
he  reminded  her  again,  getting  so  much  out  of  it  himself. 
That  touched  upon  the  half-sensitized  root  of  wifeliness. 

"It's  not  "  -  she  fell  back  upon  the  note  of  renuncia 
tion  —  "that  I  mind  doing  without  things,  if  it  only 
came  to  anything.  I  should  n't  mind  not  going  anywhere, 
if  I  had  the  price  of  going  to  spend  on  something  I  liked 


54  THE  FORD 

better.  But  I '  ve  been  doing  without  .  .  .  and  now  where 
are  we?"  Her  voice  would  break  with  it,  the  vexation, 
the  sincerity  of  her  effort  and  the  futility  of  it,  to  lay  hold 
on  anything  in  her  situation  that  approximated  to  what, 
for  her,  were  the  values  of  life.  "It  is  n't  as  if  I  did  n't  do 
my  part,  Steven  .  .  .  the  only  part  this  kind  of  life  gives 
me  a  chance  for.  I  've  kept  friendly  with  the  Burkes  — 
a  regular  Biddy  she'd  be  if  it  was  n't  for  Cornelius  —  and 
what  I've  done  for  Frank  .  .  .  His  father  would  be  sure 
to  put  you  on  to  something  if  only  —  Oh,  it  is  too  stupid 
for  anything  .  .  .  " 

Sentences  like  these  ran  on  and  mingled  in  the  boy's 
mind  with  the  tinkle  of  water  dropping  from  the  flume 
and  the  riffle  of  the  wind  across  the  chaparral  by  which 
the  Torr'  seemed  to  breathe.  In  that  impressionable  hour 
between  the  day  and  dark,  the  two  streams  sunk  and 
watered  the  roots  of  being.  Day  by  day,  as  the  rains  held 
off  and  the  year  declared  itself  one  of  unrelievable  drought, 
a  note  of  desperation  crept  into  the  question  and  recrimi 
nation  that  went  on  behind  the  walled-up  door. 

Early  in  April  the  curse  of  el  ano  malo  began  to  settle 
down  upon  Tierra  Longa,  to  be  felt  even  by  the  chil 
dren.  Both  at  Agua  Caliente  and  Palomitas  they  were 
selling  off  as  many  wethers  and  yearlings  as  possible  on 
account  of  the  scarcity  of  feed.  For  three  days  buyers 
from  San  Francisco  had  been  at  the  ranch  across  the  river, 
and  now  the  drive  was  beginning;  far  down  the  road  to 
Arroyo  Verde  the  children  could  count  the  columns  of 
dust  where  they  went  in  bands  of  three  hundred.  In  the 
flat  below,  the  shepherds  were  still  busy  parting  out  the 
ewes;  they  spread,  white  from  the  recent  shearing,  scat 
tering,  like  grains  of  corn  in  the  popper,  up  the  coast- 


THE  FORD  55 

wise  slope.  The  Palomitas's  yearlings  had  been  turned 
out  of  the  fenced  pastures  below  the  house,  and  far  to 
ward  Saltillo  the  lamb-band  fed  under  Juan  Romero, 
outside  the  fence. 

All  down  the  east  side  of  the  valley  below  the  Brent 
ranch,  the  range  was  government  land,  with  here  and  there 
a  quarter-section  bought  by  the  owner  of  Agua  Caliente 
from  the  hardy  homesteader  who  had  wasted  five  years 
upon  it.  Just  which  of  the  unfenced  squares  were  owned 
thus  was  a  matter  of  conjecture,  but  enough  of  them  to 
keep  out  the  wandering  herders  who  passed  in  their 
yearly  round  along  the  Saltillo  hills.  It  was  so  easy  for  the 
owner  of  land,  that  had  been  inadvertently  grazed  upon, 
to  institute  a  claim  for  damages  that  pared  the  profits  of 
a  whole  year's  herding.  On  dry  years  the  knee-high  sage 
and  the  curled  dry  "fillaree"  between  was  not  thought 
worth  the  risk.  That  was  why,  when  it  had  been  deter 
mined  to  turn  the  Palomitas  flocks  on  the  unclaimed  pub 
lic  pasture,  they  had  been  put  in  charge  of  Juan  Romero, 
who  knew  —  not  even  the  buzzards  knew  better  —  just 
which  of  the  invisibly  divided  squares  had  passed  into 
private  ownership. 

It  was  reported,  indeed,  that  Romero,  as  the  last  of  the 
generation  who  had  received  the  original  grant  of  Agua 
Caliente  directly  from  the  Spanish  Crown,  knew  more  of 
its  titles  and  boundaries  than  it  would  be  convenient  for 
the  Old  Man  to  have  made  public.  What  he  might  or 
might  n't  have  got  out  of  the  Old  Man  on  account  of  it 
had  been  for  long  one  of  the  settled  speculations  of 
Arroyo  Verde. 

The  drought  crept  on  them  slowly.  The  spring  flood 
came  too  early,  with  the  rapidly  melting  snows,  and 


56  THE  FORD 

was  gone  too  soon.  The  wild  grass  failed  to  seed:  the 
buzzards  thickened  in  the  lit  space  between  the  ranges. 
The  one  good  rain  which  was  to  have  saved  them  dis 
solved  in  quick,  impotent  showers;  by  the  end  of  June 
the  streams  were  all  shrunk  well  within  their  summer 
limits.  Over  all  Tierra  Longa  a  weight  like  a  great  hand 
was  laid,  moving  up  slowly  toward  the  source  of  life  and 
breath. 

It  turned  out  that,  though  there  was  no  school  at 
Palomitas,  it  made  very  little  difference  to  Kenneth;  he 
was  to  be  kept  at  the  herding.  He  remembered  his  fath 
er's  curt  "I  can't  spare  him7'  as  the  point  at  which  he 
began  to  react  instinctively  to  the  pressure  from  without, 
the  impalpable  threatening  of  the  Powers.  Whatever  it 
was,  he  felt  himself  leagued  with  his  father  not  to  let  it 
happen.  Two  of  the  men  had  been  paid  off  early  in  the 
season;  there  were  days  when  it  did  not  seem  possible  one 
pair  of  legs  could  do  all  the  running  necessary  to  keep  the 
hungry  sheep  at  their  short  pastures.  Evenings  Kenneth 
would  drop  asleep  with  fatigue  over  his  plate,  starting 
awake  with  a  feeling  of  his  mother's  immense  and  inex 
plicable  graciousness  in  not  taking  it  out  of  him  for  such 
lapses.  Times  he  would  be  conscious  of  her  hands  about 
him  as  she  laid  him  on  his  bed,  and  moved  his  lips  grate 
fully  against  her  sleeve,  her  bosom  .  .  . 

Anne,  it  had  been  decided,  should  ride  over  every  day 
to  have  lessons  with  Virginia  and  Frank  under  the  young 
tutor.  Afternoons  Frank  would  ride  back  with  her  to 
open  the  gates.  The  tutor  modestly  confided  to  Mrs. 
Brent  that  this  was  partly  his  own  idea;  he  considered  the 
society  of  girls  excellent  for  Frank;  it  was  softening. 
Much  of  his  own  softness,  which  was  conspicuous,  he 


THE  FORD  57 

owed  to  such  influences.  The  tutor  had  not,  however, 
seen  his  young  charges  racing  up  the  lane  with  flying  hair 
and  lathered  horses.  Mrs.  Brent  had,  and  made  it  the 
basis  of  a  struggle  which  went  on  the  summer  long  be 
tween  herself  and  Anne,  in  which  Anne  was  continually 
losing  ground.  Not  that  Mrs.  Brent  debated  or  put  com 
mands  on  her.  What  she  did  was  to  put  her  into  muslins 
and  embroideries;  she  constrained  her  with  nothing  more 
palpable  than  paper  patterns.  Anne  could  reject  the 
promptings  of  propriety  with  young  scorn,  but  she  was 
not  proof  against  the  feminine  obligation  of  not  "  making 
wash/'  She  was  reduced  by  it  before  the  end  of  the  sum 
mer  to  a  frame  of  behavior  through  which  Kenneth  could 
perceive  the  shaping  outlines  of  a  young  lady.  It  was 
about  this  time  that  he  noticed  that  his  mother  was  not 
fretting  about  the  trip  to  the  coast  with  which  she  cus 
tomarily  broke  the  long  summer  at  the  ranch. 

"I  suppose  I  might  manage  it  for  you  and  Anne/'  his 
father  had  told  her,  "but  I  simply  can't  spare  the  boy." 

"Oh,"  she  resented,  "I'm  not  quite  unnatural!  I  don't 
want  to  spoil  all  my  children's  chances!" 

Kenneth  took  it  from  this  that  Anne  was  getting  on 
remarkably  well  in  her  studies  with  Frank.  Whatever 
either  of  that  gifted  pair  chose  to  dispense  for  his  benefit, 
he  received  with  unenvious  admiration. 

That  year  the  buzzards  drooped  low  and  lower  over 
Tierra  Longa.  Under  the  morning  haze  every  hillock, 
every  dying  rump  was  black  with  them.  The  fences  had 
been  cut  and  all  the  cattle  turned  out  to  the  bone-dry 
land.  Mere  crates  of  bones  themselves,  they  tottered  in 
the  trails ;  they  lay  down  at  last  with  their  heads  pointed 
toward  the  course  of  the  vanished  streams,  while  the  buz- 


58  THE  FORD 

zards  walked  solemnly  about  and  made  occasional  hoarse 
comments  on  the  ripeness  of  their  condition.  The  sheep 
fared  better.  They  could  be  herded  and  restrained  to 
their  meager  allowance  of  sapless,  sun-dried  grass.  All 
up  the  camisal  there  were  lacunae,  little  natural  clear 
ings  where  only  the  deer  had  penetrated  before,  — 
potreros  they  were  called,  —  which  were  opened  up  for 
the  Palomitas  flocks.  Peters  would  cut  lanes  in  the  ca- 
mise,  and  Kenneth  would  follow  along  the  sharp  stubble 
with  the  sheep.  It  was  easier  for  him  than  for  the  men; 
he  could  creep  in  between  the  thick,  interlacing  stems 
and  bring  back  the  hunger-driven  stragglers. 

As  they  worked  up  the  Torr'  there  was  much  of  the 
high-growing  chaparral  of  which  the  sheep  could  eat 
both  leaves  and  bark,  and  tufts  of  bunch  grass  growing 
in  the  crevices  of  the  rocks.  It  was  hot,  heart-break 
ing  work.  Days  when  they  fed  close  to  the  Palomitas 
fence  Kenneth  would  see  the  gaunt  cattle  watching  them 
\  over  the  wires  from  their  own  gnawed  pastures.  There 
\  was  something  terrifying  to  the  boy  in  the  slender, 
Vpointed  horns  measuring  his  full  length  from  tip  to  tip, 
and  the  famished  eyes  underneath.  Although  Peters  re 
proved  him  for  it,  he  could  not  forbear  at  times  to  push 
branches  of  the  buckthorn  under  the  fence.  Nights  after 
would  often  find  him  running  down  interminable  close 
lanes  of  chaparral  pursued  by  formless  heads  all  slender 
horn  and  glazing,  hungry  eyes.  Sometimes  he  would  spy 
his  mother  at  the  end  of  the  run  and  manage  to  cry  out  to 
her,  then  he  would  find  her  comforting  him  in  his  bed. 
Afterward  he  would  hear  voices,  quarreling,  it  seemed, 
but  he  could  never  make  out  over  what. 

"  You'll  kill  the  boy,  too,  before  you're  done  .  .  .  What 


THE  FORD  59 

is  this  place  to  you  that  you  should  sacrifice  everything 
to  it?  What  is  it  to  any  of  us?  There  is  n't  even  a  living! 
Just  a  selfish  craze  you've  got.  I'll  be  glad  if  they  do 
foreclose.  I'll  be  glad!  Do  you  understand?  It's  taken 
fifteen  years  of  my  life,  but  I  '11  not  stay  until  it  takes  my 
children!" 

"It"  was  no  doubt  the  terror  which  pursued  him  down 
the  blind  lanes  of  sleep.  Even  his  mother  was  afraid  of  it. 

After  Frank  joined  his  father  in  San  Francisco  and 
Mrs.  Burke  had  taken  Virginia  and  the  twins  away  with 
her  to  Santa  Barbara,  Anne  used  to  come  out  to  him  in 
the  long  afternoons  as  often  as  her  mother  would  let  her, 
which  was  oftener  than  would  have  been  permitted  if  she 
had  not  —  O  clever  Anne!  —  thought  of  bringing  her 
books  along  with  the  avowed  intention  of  keeping  Ken 
neth  up  with  his  studies.  So  they  made  sand  maps  for 
geography  and  learned  by  heart  the  "Book  of  Golden 
Deeds."  The  sun  turned  in  his  course  and  the  days  fell 
cooler;  people  began  to  look  prayerfully  for  the  winter 
rains. 

In  September  they  began  cutting  the  post  oaks  to  get 
at  the  moss  that  clung  like  film  to  the  lower  branches. 

Burke  came  over  from  Agua  Caliente  that  day  to  offer 
the  consolation  of  company.  Very  little  passed  between 
the  two  men  beyond  a  prolonged  handshake. 

"I'm  thinkin'  the  rain  can't  hold  off  much  longer/' 
Burke  proposed  as  a  likely  topic. 

Brent  turned  his  hands  outward  with  a  gesture  that 
said  that  any  time  now  would  be  too  long  for  him.  He 
was  a  slighter  man  than  his  neighbor,  but  with  a  sort 
of  personal  sureness  before  which  Cornelius,  with  all 
Brent's  informality,  felt  often  at  a  disadvantage. 


60  THE  FORD 

"And  yet,"  —  Brent  returned  to  a  subject  that  was 
always  in  his  mind,  —  " there 's  water  .  .  .  there's  thou 
sands  of  cubic  inches  of  water  ..."  His  gaze  wandering 
down  the  glittering  hieroglyphic  of  the  river  completed 
the  suggestion.  "  There 's  people,  too,  if  they  could  only 
get  together  —  why  can't  they  get  together?" 

"And  if  they  could,  the  whole  bilin'  of  them  would  n't 
be  the  match  of  the  Old  Man." 

"Ah,  but  why  can't  we  get  together  with  him,  —  why 
should  n't  all  of  our  interests  be  identical?  They  are  as  a 
matter  of  fact;  what  I  can't  understand  is  why  a  man  of 
Rickart's  intelligence  don't  see  it." 

"Now,  Brent,  what  for  running  mate  would  the  lot  of 
them"  —  Burke  thrust  out  his  hand  toward  the  cluster  of 
small  ranches  around  Arroyo  Verde  —  "be  for  the  Old 
fyTan?  There's  that  to  think  of." 

/  "We're  not  so  dull  as  that  comes  to."  A  glow  began 
r  to  come  into  Brent's  pale  face.  "We  have  ideas,  —  I 
have  ideas  .  .  .  There's  no  sense  in  our  having  times  like 
this.  There's  water  there  .  .  .  water  goin'  to  waste  .  .  . 
and  stock  dying  for  want  of  what  the  water  would  grow. 
Ah,  look  at  it,  Burke."  Far  down  they  could  see  the  pale 
gleam  of  the  mud  flats  in  the  tulares.  "Thousands  of 
cubic  feet  going  to  waste  every  year." 

"Well,  this  is  the  way  I  look  at  it,  Misther  Brent; 
there's  ideas  goin'  around  loose,  slathers  of  ideas,  but  the 
thing  that  counts  is  puttin'  'em  through.  I  don't  know 
what  quality  the  Old  Man's  ideas  are,  but  he  gets  'em 
through." 

"Oh  —  through  —  where?  Ahead  of  the  others,  per 
haps,  but  where?  Your  cattle  are  dying  on  your  hands 
like  flies,  Burke.  What  can  even  Rickart  do  when  the 


THE  FORD  61 

land  turns  against  us?  It  takes  all  of  us  to  fight  that,  but 
we  are  busy  fighting  one  another.  And  the  beasts  die  - 
starve  —  on  our  hands.  We  that  took  them  out  of  their 
native  state  and  taught  them  to  depend  on  our  care! 
Ours!  You'll  save  —  how  many,  Burke?" 

" One  in  ten  if  we're  lucky." 

"And  I  —  now  ..."  He  held  up  his  four  fingers;  after 
some  consideration  he  added  the  thumb  to  them.  "I  can 
hold  out  five  weeks.  If  the  rain  does  n't  come  by  then, 
I  shan't  save  any  of  them." 

"The  Old  Man  is  sending  me  ten  tons  of  alfalfa  for  the 
brood  stock;  I  could  spare  you  a  couple  if  it's  any  help  to 
you,"  Burke  offered. 

"Thank  you  kindly,  Cornelius."  Brent  laughed  again 
his  short,  light  laugh,  like  a  man  quite  at  the  bottom  of 
things,  secure  only  in  the  certainty  that  nothing  worse 
could  happen  to  him.  "I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you  that  I 
could  n't  pay  for  it.  I'm  done,  Burke.  Morrow  wants  to 
foreclose." 

"But,  man,  it's  not  half  the  value  of  the  land!" 

"That's  why.  Any  other  year  but  this  I  could  raise 
the  money  anywhere."  They  looked  quietly  out  at  the 
shapely,  sunny  valley  with  the  river  winding  down.  "My 
wife's  not  been  happy  here  either,"  Brent  added  as  the 
last  drop  in  the  cup. 

"'Tis  a  hard  country  for  women,"  Burke  conceded. 
"Men  love  it,  just,  but  women  —  they  want  different 
things.  You've  heard,"  he  hinted,  "that  Rickart  is 
sending  me  to  Summer  field  ?"  Brent  nodded.  "There's 
chances  there,  I'm  told,  for  the  pickin'.  Maybe  now  - 
Some  deeper  sympathy  than  words  allowed  prevented 
him  from  finishing. 


62  THE  FORD 

Brent  got  up  abruptly  and  walked  to  the  edge  of  the 
veranda. 

"That's  it,"  he  cried;  "that's  just  it!  Wherever  the 
land  flings  us  a  handful  of  coin  we  run  and  scramble  for  it 
like  beggars  in  the  street.  And  she  laughs  —  she  laughs. 
I  tell  you,  Burke,  we've  got  to  master  her  —  we've  got 
to  compel  her  .  .  ." 

Foreshadowed  thus  in  the  talk  of  their  elders,  the  Brent 
children  felt  the  approach  of  disaster.  The  Burkes  added 
something  to  that  the  day  they  came  over  to  say  good 
bye;  for  Cornelius  was  being  transferred  to  Summerfield 
to  have  charge  of  Rickart's  oil  interests.  Frank  was  leav 
ing  soon  for  the  school  for  which  his  tutor  had  been  fitting 
him.  There  was  a  sobering  realization  of  change  stilling 
the  impulse  of  play,  as  they  made  for  the  last  time  the 
round  of  Palomitas.  There  were  a  good  many  pitiful  little 
starved  corpses  in  the  camisal,  and  the  air  was  black 
with  buzzards. 

At  Mariposa  the  Ford  was  bone- white  with  drought. 

"What  fun  we  used  to  have  here  when  we  were  little," 
Virginia  sighed.  It  seemed  to  them  that  these  things  all 
happened  a  long  time  ago.  "Oh,  well,  we'll  soon  all  be 
together  again.  My  father  said  so." 

"What  did  he  say?"  demanded  Anne  with  interest. 

"He  said  if  Jevens  would  give  ten  thousand  more  than 
the  mortgage,  your  father  would  jump  at  it." 

This  was  so  far  from  being  clear  to  Kenneth  that  he 
took  the  first  opportunity  to  talk  it  over  with  Peters,  who 
told  him  that  it  meant  that  Jevens  was  trying  to  buy 
Palomitas.  Peters  was  a  raw,  red-looking  man,  with 
absurd  yellowish  hair  sprouting  about  his  crown  and  on 
his  upper  lip.  He  had  the  strength  of  a  steer  and  not 


THE  FORD  63 

more  than  two  or  three  motives,  one  of  which,  though  he 
would  have  denied  it,  was  a  deep,  sentimentalized  at 
tachment  to  his  employer. 

"But  my  father  wouldn't  let  him  have  it  —  he 
would  n't,"  Kenneth  scoffed. 

"Oh,  well,"  —  Peters  was  judicial,  —  "your  paw's  a 
smart  man.  A  mighty  smart  man.  I  ain't  much  on  this 
oil  stock  they  talk  about;  got  all  the  stock  I  kin  tend  to 
right  here  on  Palomitas  .  .  .  kind  o'  stock  'at  keeps  itself 
above  ground's  all  /  kin  tend  to."  It  was  Peters's  one 
joke  and  he  made  the  most  of  it. 

"Hank  Sturgis  said  the  oil  stock  was  going  up;  right 
up."  Kenneth  did  not  know  what  this  meant  exactly, 
though  he  heard  it  often  enough;  he  was  grateful  to 
Peters  for  treating  him  to  grown-up  conversation. 

"Oh,  well,  now,"  -  Peters  reached  out  with  his  bill 
hook,  —  there  were  bright  freckles  as  large  as  ten-cent 
pieces  on  his  raw  wrists,  and  tufts  of  reddish  hair  at  the 
base  of  his  fingers,  —  "it  stands  to  reason  that  they  don't 
know  how  it's  going.  But  your  Paw  's  a  master  hand  with 
stock,  an'  if  he  thinks  it's  better  'n  any  stock  he's  got 
right  here  on  Palomitas,  you  ain't  no  call  to  worry  none." 

It  was  about  this  time  that  Jevens  came  back.  Ken 
neth,  bringing  up  the  straggling  lamb-band  that  they 
might  have  the  first  go  at  the  long  moss  on  the  fallen  oaks, 
saw  him  stalking  Steven  Brent  across  the  fields,  and  a 
little  shiver  went  over  him  as  though  Jevens  might  have 
been,  what  'Nacio  insisted  on  calling  him,  El  diablo  negro. 
But  in  the  valley  everybody  was  frankly  glad  to  see 
Mr.  Jevens. 

To  Arroyo  Verde,  where  cattle  men,  with  something  in 
their  eyes  strangely  like  the  look  of  the  famished  herds, 


64  THE  FORD 

sat  about  idly  under  the  wide  old  sycamores  and  listened 
to  the  dropping  of  ripe  fruit  in  the  orchards  round,  Jevens 
was  the  incontestable  evidence  of  places  where,  and  occa 
sions  by  which  the  normal  procedure  of  life  was  still  go 
ing  on.  "Over  beyond,"  which  was,  in  Tierra  Longa,  a 
generic  name  for  the  country  beyond  the  Saltillo  hills, 
there  was  still  money  clinking  down  the  arteries  of  trade; 
it  clinked  revivifyingly  for  them  in  Mr.  Jevens's  pockets. 
Whatever  happened  to  Tierra  Longa  there  was  still 
good  money  to  be  made  in  oil. 

Those  who  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  "get  in  with  the 
Old  Man"  held  on  to  all  that  the  relation  implied  as  the 
drowning  to  a  rope.  They  took  to  hope  as  though  it  had 
been  to  hard  drink.  They  tucked  up  their  feet  and  let  the 
drought  go  by  them. 

On  the  evening  of  his  return  Jevens  supped  at  Palo- 
mitas,  and  addressed  most  of  his  conversation  to  Mrs. 
Brent,  retailing  incidents  of  his  trip  "over  west  a  ways." 

"But  I  did  n't,"  he  remarked,  cooling  his  coffee  in  his 
saucer  and  supporting  himself  with  his  elbows  on  the 
table,  "find  just  the  property  I  was  looking  for.  I  don't 
know  as  I  see  anything  which  stuck  in  my  eye  like  this 
little  property  right  here."  It  must  have  been  in  the  cast 
eye  it  stuck,  for  there  was  nothing  that  Kenneth  could 
make  out,  in  the  one  turned  toward  him,  but  a  velvety, 
opaque  blackness.  "I  don't  know,"  he  repeated,  "as  I 
ever  see  a  property  which  stuck  in  my  eye  the  way  this 
does." 

Kenneth  heard  his  mother  crying  in  the  room  that 
night.  She  cried  with  exasperation  and  hopeless  hurt, 
and  at  times  with  a  strange  terror.  It  seemed  a  part  of 


THE  FORD  65 

something  that  had  been  going  on  a  long  time,  as  if  he 
might  have  heard  it  many  nights  before  and  only  now 
taken  note  of  it. 

"But  there  ought  to  be  something  you  could  do.  There 
is  always  something."  Her  voice  rose  out  of  sobbing. 
"After  all  we've  wasted  here  .  .  .  time  and  money  ...  to 
have  to  be  turned  out.  And  it  is  n't  as  if  you  had  n't 
had  an  offer,  as  if  you  could  n't  have  gone  on  your  own 
terms  .  .  ." 

"It  was  n't  really  an  offer,"  he  could  hear  his  father 
answer  in  a  toneless  patience;  "we  don't  know  that  we'd 
have  gotten  out  with  anything  in  that  case  either.  We 
could  pull  through  if  we  had  rain  —  just  one  good  rain  - 
God!"  He  broke  off  with  the  same  note  of  bitter  help 
lessness. 

"It  isn't  going  to  rain  .  .  .  Why  would  Mr.  Rickart 
send  the  Burkes  away  if  he  thought  it  would  rain?  If  a 
man  like  that  gives  up,  what 's  the  sense  of  your  holding 
on!" 

"He  is  n't  giving  up.  It's  only  that  he's  learned  that 
he  must  have  a  bigger  man,  more  scientific  management. 
He's  sending  Burke  to  Summerfield  to  let  him  down 
easy." 

"He'll  make  his  fortune  for  him  first,  anyway  .  .  ." 

There  was  a  silence  in  which  Kenneth  dropped  almost 
into  the  pit  of  dreams.  Suddenly  the  trouble  broke  out 
again  with  a  torturing,  impatient  cry. 

"Oh  —  you  are  going  to  sleep!  You  can  sleep!  And 
you  don't  know  if  the  children  and  I  are  to  have  a  roof 
over  our  heads!  No  wonder  things  go  on  the  way  they  do 
when  you  don't  have  it  on  your  mind  any  more  than 
that!" 


66  THE  FORD 

Kenneth  sat  up  in  bed  struggling  with  his  stupor;  he 
was  under  the  impression  that  this  was  addressed  some 
how  to  himself.  Then  he  heard  the  trouble  die  away  in 
dull  sobbing  and  protesting,  extenuating  endearment. 
It  mingled  with  the  voices  that  pursued  him  down  the 
labyrinths  of  drought  and  sleep  .  .  . 


IT  was  n't  in  the  least,  as  Anne  had  said,  like  an  artesian 
well.  It  came  up  from  the  pumps  in  black,  pasty  gobs, 
and  stank.  That  was  Kenneth's  first  impression  of  the 
oil  fields  the  November  evening  that  Peters  drove  them 
down  to  Summerfield  with  their  goods  lumbering  behind 
them  in  the  wool  wagon.  They  lay,  the  half-hundred 
wells,  in  the  hollow  of  an  old  earthquake  drop  that  took  a 
curving  line  about  the  town  and  left  it  high  on  the  up- 
tilted  side.  At  the  foot  of  the  drop  the  waste  of  the  river 
seeped  away  and  the  hollow  climbed  by  degrees  to  the 
comb  of  the  mesa,  drawn  all  in  fine  puckers  where  the 
flocks  had  left  it  bare  to  the  ruining  rains.  In  the  early 
dusk  they  made  out  the  derricks  each  by  his  little,  danger- 
red  eye,  like  half-formed,  prehistoric  creatures  feeling 
their  way  up  from  the  depths  to  light,  leaning  all  together 
with  the  slight  undulations  of  the  land,  and  seeming  to 
communicate  in  low,  guttering  blubs  and  endless  creak- 
ings,  as  though  they  plotted  to  tear  loose  at  any  moment 
and  stamp  out  the  little  hordes  of  men  who  ran  perpetu 
ally  about,  or  collected  in  knots  among  the  sheds  with 
their  heads  together. 

There  were  crowds  of  men.  The  night  the  Brents  had 
driven  up,  belated,  to  the  hotel,  they  saw  them  standing 
weariedly  about  the  bar  like  storks,  puffy  with  want  of 
sleep,  and  yet  always  with  a  tense,  waiting  air.  Rows  of 
men  slumped  in  chairs  in  the  dim-lit  halls,  trying  to  sleep, 
and  outside  in  the  street  men  walked  up  and  down  as 
though  no  such  thing  as  sleep  were  thought  of.  Long 


68  THE  FORD 

after  the  Burkes  had  taken  them  in,  for  beds  at  the  hotel 
were  not  to  be  had  for  any  money,  Kenneth  could  hear, 
louder  than  the  wind  on  the  Torr',  the  troubled  roirmur 
of  the  town. 

It  was  not  real  trouble  he  made  out  in  a  day  or  two, 
but  the  milling  of  men  about  the  oil  interest  like  the 
mindless  blether  of  the  flock;  it  rose  at  times  to  the  note 
of  happy  excitement.  Men  clustered  like  bees  about  the 
hive  before  the  post-office  and  the  bank;  they  collected 
in  the  streets  and  were  cast  back  and  forth  between  the 
trolley  and  the  pavement  by  the  passer-by,  without  any 
cessation  of  their  absorbing  talk. 

To  the  Brent  children,  threading  their  way  to  school 
among  them,  there  was,  in  spite  of  the  widest  individual 
differences,  a  curious  likeness  about  all  these  gesticulating 
men;  the  likeness  of  all  the  hounds  in  the  pack,  of  what 
ever  breeds,  at  the  parting  of  the  quarry.  Wherever  there 
was  news  of  a  "strike,"  of  a  new  company  formed  or  an 
old  one  extended,  they  leaped  and  snatched  at  morsels  of 
it,  only  to  tear  away  excitedly  at  the  least  report  of  one 
in  some  other  direction.  They  slavered  with  the  desire  of 
"stock,"  they  gave  tongue  at  the  mere  hint  of  dividends. 
And  over  all,  through  the  streets,  in  the  houses  even, 
there  was  the  penetrating,  acrid  flavor  of  oil.  It  came  in 
at  the  church  windows  and  gave  to  the  Sunday  quietness 
the  effect  of  a  lull  in  the  market  merely. 

At  Palomitas,  the  night  after  Mr.  Jevens  had  bought 
the  ranch,  the  rain  began:  a  fine,  long,  growing  rain. 
Clouds  enfilading  behind  the  Coast  Ranges  poured  bil 
lowing  down  on  Tierra  Longa;  they  took  the  Saltillos. 
Hour  by  hour,  as  the  wind  bunted  the  flocked  masses, 
the  hilltops  showed  a  spreading  greenness;  in  the  burnt 


THE  FORD  69 

camisal  little  green  spears  put  forth  from  the  immortal 
roots.  The  sheep,  loosed  to  the  wild  pastures,  ran  fran 
tically  about;  the  grass,  too  short  to  nip,  looked  always 
longer  in  the  far  places.  Kenneth  ran  with  them,  and 
begged,  when  he  had  time  for  it,  to  be  left  behind  with  his 
father  until  Christmas,  but  the  advantage  of  the  fall  term  at 
school  had  hurried  his  mother  away  with  the  two  children. 
It  was  understood  that  Mr.  Brent  was  to  come  on  as  soon 
as  Jevens  took  possession,  and  "get  into  something." 

If  in  the  mean  time  Mrs.  Brent  had  shrunk  from  the 
adventure  of  pulling  up  and  transplanting  her  home, 
there  was  nothing  in  her  manner  which  allowed  her  chil 
dren  to  discover  it.  They  saw  her  always  leaning  out  from 
the  little  circle  of  their  present  circumstances,  to  drink 
the  town;  they  copied  as  far  as  possible  her  eager  attitude, 
though  they  did  not  know  very  well  what  it  was  about. 
Day  by  day  as  on  their  way  to  school  they  glimpsed  the 
blue  Torr'  through  gaps  in  the  street  above  the  undis 
tinguished  hills  which  divided  it  from  Summerfield,  they 
hastened  to  assuage  their  homesickness  by  ranging  them 
selves  on  their  mother's  side. 

"She  belongs  here,  I  guess,"  —  Kenneth  kicked  at  the 
late  blooming  succory  which  still  came  up  through  the 
sidewalks  of  by-streets  in  Summerfield.  .  .  .  "There's 
taboose  along  Mariposa  Creek  now,  and  cluster  lilies 
coming  up  ...  she  never  even  mentions  it  — 

"She  wants  us  to  like  this  better,"  —  Anne  gravely 
understood.  " She's  going  to  like  it  better  herself 
whether  it  is  or  not." 

"Is  it  better?"  Kenneth  wondered.  Times  when  he 
looked  up  at  the  Torr'  there  was  such  a  pull  in  his  bosom 
that  he  felt  he  must  set  out  for  it  that  very  hour. 


70  THE  FORD 

Anne  was  disposed  to  make  the  best  of  things. 

" There's  school/'  she  offered. 

Yes,  there  was  school;  an  absorbing,  preponderating 
experience.  With  minds  unwearied  of  print  they  had 
taken  to  it  as  ducklings  to  water. 

"  Anyway/'  —  Kenneth  returned  to  the  point  at  which 
the  conversation  began,  —  "she  belongs." 

"Oh,  she  belongs,  more  than  anybody."  Anne  was 
sure  of  her  ground. 

"More  than  Mrs.  Burke!" 

"I  should  say!" 

"Mrs.  Burke  is  a  regular  Biddy  — "  Kenneth  did  not 
know  where  this  had  come  from;  he  knew  it  as  one  of 
those  edged  tools  of  grown-up  judgment  with  which  some 
unwritten  law  of  childhood  forbade  them  yet  to  play. 
Brother  and  sister  gasped  across  it,  scared  and  yet  im 
plicated  in  the  mutual  recognition.  It  was  one  of  those 
moments  by  which  the  world  outside  them  fell  into  order 
and  perspective,  but  they  neither  of  them  knew  what  had 
set  it  in  motion. 

Anne,  however,  in  spite  of  the  pains  that  had  been 
taken  with  her,  was  a  little  lady. 

"She's  Virginia's  mother."  She  pulled  them  both  back 
into  the  practical  relation.  What,  indeed,  would  they 
have  done,  feeling  their  way  about  school  society,  without 
Virginia!  Moments  of  confidence  like  this  increased 
between  them,  for  want  of  more  objective  interests. 

That  their  situation  was  not,  in  a  material  way,  any 
thing  like  so  good  as  at  Palomitas  the  young  Brents 
could  n't  help  knowing. 

The  three  little  rooms  into  which  they  had  to  stuff  their 
household  goods,  the  scrappiness  of  all  their  ways  of 


THE  FORD  71 

living,  could  n't  have  been  borne  except  by  the  implica 
tion,  in  which  all  Summerfield  was  involved,  of  its  being 
a  concession  to  the  process  of  growth.  Everywhere  one 
was  met  with  the  joyous  extenuations  of  the  "boom." 
You  would  n't  have  guessed  either,  from  anything  you 
heard^n  the  town,  that  Summerfield  had  n't  kept  the  oil 
fields  up  its  sleeve  awaiting  the  felicitous  hour.  This  was 
an  attitude  that  matched  wonderfully  with  the  high, 
eager  mood  of  their  mother's  which  the  Brent  children 
had  recognized  as  the  company  sign.  In  the  midst  of  it 
she  had  for  them,  quite  unmistakably  and  in  the  super 
lative  degree,  the  note  of  social  fitness.  She  was  tall,  her 
thick  hair  had  still  a  touch  of  brightness,  and  if  it  gave 
them  sometimes  a  strange  embarrassment  to  meet  her  as 
she  appeared  on  the  street,  the  waist  a  little  too  tight,  the 
bust  a  trifle  too  full,  a  shade  too  much  pearl  powder 
under  the  veil,  they  did  not  fail  to  see  in  her  what  Cor 
nelius  Burke  had  defined  for  them  as  the  fine  figure  of  a 
woman.  They  believed  quite  heartily  in  the  future  which 
her  manner  created  for  them,  and  unassailably  in  their 
mother's  being  equal  to  any  of  the  brilliant  possibilities 
which  were  tossed  up  from  time  to  time  on  the  black, 
gurgling  fountains  under  the  derricks.  At  least  Anne  and 
Virginia  believed  and  Kenneth  accepted  his  faith  at  their 
hands. 

And  yet  after  he  joined  them  at  Christmas,  their  father 
didn't,  unaccountably,  "get  into"  anything.  Things 
hovered,  bright,  irreducible  promises  that  seemed  about 
to  fold  their  wings  and  rest  upon  the  fortunes  of  the 
Brents,  only  to  sail  high  over  them  at  last  and  fix  on  the 
most  unlikely  quarters.  By  the  end  of  the  spring  term 
he  was  still  so  far  from  being  "in"  that  it  began  to  seem, 


72  THE  FORD 

with  so  many  good  things  flying  over,  failure  must  be 
owing  to  the  quality  of  the  intelligence  with  which  Mr. 
Brent  limed  the  twigs  of  his  investments. 

That  somebody  had  said  or  suggested  something  of  the 
kind  began  to  be  present  to  the  children  in  unpremeditated 
attitudes  of  partisanship,  in  darts  and  flashes  by  which 
they  felt  themselves  flung  to  one  side  or  the  other  in  the 
inexplicable  urgency  of  affairs.  A  sense  of  that  urgency 
rose  about  them  in  the  crowded  little  room  until  it  drove 
them  quite  literally  against  their  father's  breast  and  to 
his  knee,  only  to  be  drawn  back  from  that  community 
of  sympathy  by  the  rising  consciousness  that  it  had 
been  formed  outside  their  mother's  claim  on  them,  and 
somehow  incalculably  against  her  interest.  The  trouble, 
whatever  it  was,  seemed  to  be  summed  up  for  them  in 
the  current  phrase  that  their  father  was  n't  "in"  things, 
and  that  not  to  be  in  was  somehow  blamable. 

"But  I  could,  you  know,"  he  had  more  than  once 
insisted.  "Burke  would  give  me  charge  of  one  of  the 
groups  of  Company  wells  if  I  wanted  it." 

"You  mean  you'd  be  working  for  him?"  Mrs.  Brent 
had  turned  from  shaking  out  the  cloth  to  take  in  the  full 
meaning  of  it. 

"Well,  in  a  manner  —  he  has  charge  of  all  the  Rickart 
Interests." 

"Working  for  Cornelius  —  and  I'd  have  to  treat  her  as 
my  employer's  wife?  I  can't  see  what  you  're  thinking  of ! " 

"I'd  be  on  the  ground  .  .  .  Cornelius  would  give  me 
tips  .  .  ." 

"And  she  would  me  ...  perhaps  that's  what  you 
want.  Perhaps  you  think  I  need  to  be  told  what  to  do  for 
my  family  — "  Exasperation  mastered  her.  "After  I've 


THE  FORD  73 

been  willing  to  pull  up  everything  and  come  here  to  make 
a  new  start,  to  have  to  come  to  this!" 

"It's  come  to  us,"  her  husband  reminded  her.  "If  you 
don't  like  it,  there's  no  need  to  think  of  it  again." 

They  did  think  of  it,  however;  it  came  up  in  talk  over 
and  over. 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  should  take  anything  from  Cor 
nelius,"  Mrs.  Brent  would  expostulate.  "Why  don't 
you  go  to  Rickart  himself?" 

"I  did,  my  dear." 

"You  mean  —  oh,  I'll  not  believe  it.  Steven,  you've 
bungled  matters  somehow."  She  was  sitting  at  the  sup 
per-table  at  which  the  absence  of  Ah  Sen  was  conspicu 
ous  in  the  pushed-back  plates  and  the  spotted  cloth 
which  she  tapped  with  a  hand  that  the  weeks  of  doing 
her  own  housework  had  not  yet  robbed  of  its  rosy  finish. 
The  shaded  glow  of  the  lamp  just  touched  her  fine  bosom 
and  the  beginning  of  the  flush  of  exasperation  along  her 
cheek.  "You  mean  he  sent  you  to  get  a  job  from  Cor 
nelius?" 

"My  dear,  you  don't  understand  how  men  look  at 
these  things  .  .  .  better  than  I  would  jump  at  it.  It's  a 
chance  to  get  in  touch,  to  know  what's  doing.  And  the 
way  we  are  situated  — " 

"Oh  —  what  you  can't  see,  what  you  won't  see,  Ste 
ven,  is  that  it's  the  way  we  are  situated  that  is  the  real 
trouble.  After  fifteen  years  ...  to  have  to  edge  in  like 
that!  It's  only  the  proof  of  what  I've  always  said,  that 
with  all  I've  done  without,  we  haven't  got  anywhere. 
Fifteen  years  we've  been  at  it,  and  here  I  am  doing  my 
own  housework,  and  you  taking  anything  Cornelius 
Burke  gives  us  for  charity! " 


74  THE  FORD 

"Oh,  my  dear  .  .  .  charity!  You  do  make  us  poor  when 
you  take  it  like  that!" 

"Oh,  take  it!"  She  pushed  back  her  chair  and  stood  up 
to  her  unaccustomed  task.  "Anybody  can  see  how  I 
take  it ...  look  at  my  hands  .  .  .  it 's  being  in  a  position 
where  we  have  to  take  it  that  I  mind.  I  '11  take  it  as  well 
as  the  rest  of  you." 

"Why,  then,  we'll  take  it  as  the  best  of  jokes,  —  eh, 
kiddies!"  He  opened  his  arms  to  them,  perhaps  as  a  re 
minder  to  her  that,  at  any  rate,  they  were  there  and  taking 
in  everything  in  their  several  capacities.  Perhaps  also 
there  was  some  deeper  need  of  his  for  their  sustaining 
arms,  their  young,  loyal  confidence.  It  was  there  that 
the  situation  stood  when  the  spring  term  of  school  was 
finished  and  Kenneth  went  back  to  Tierra  Longa  for  a 
visit  with  Frank. 

He  went  up  with  Hank  Sturgis  in  the  supply  wagon, 
along  the  road  that  wound  and  wound  among  the  bare- 
topped  hills,  threaded  all  through  their  canons  with 
rivers  of  green.  Kenneth  had  meant  to  lose  no  point  of 
the  way,  especially  after  they  struck  into  the  southern 
spar  of  the  Saltillos,  but  he  went  to  sleep  stretched  along 
the  feed  bags  soon  after  dark,  and  knew  nothing  of  the 
Torr'  until  he  saw  its  dark  bulk  above  the  patio  of  Agua 
Caliente,  where  Frank  and  the  dogs  leaped  a  welcome  to 
him.  Frank  had  come  back  from  his  own  school  two  days 
before,  taller  and  more  citified  as  Kenneth  saw  him,  a 
little  subdued  by  the  discovery  there  of  several  things 
that  he  had  n't  been  able  to  do,  and  a  little  more  insolent 
on  account  of  the  things  he  had  discovered  that  his 
father's  money  could  do.  But  to  do  him  justice  he  was 
fond  of  Kenneth;  the  family  at  Palomitas  had  been  the 


THE  FORD  75 

nearest  thing  to  kin  that  he  had  known.  He  was  as  eager 
as  his  guest  to  review  the  familiar  bosom  of  the  Torr'. 

Ken's  pony  had  been  kept  at  Agua  Caliente  in  anticipa 
tion  of  this  visit,  and  as  they  came  clattering  over  the 
bridge  into  the  Palomitas  road  next  afternoon,  it  seemed 
incredible  that  they  should  n't  find  there  all  the  familiar 
air  and  use  of  home.  Over  the  scars  of  drought  the  year 
had  woven  a  thin  web  of  green,  too  thin  for  the  wandering 
air  above  it  to  wake  the  stir  and  play  of  light  by  which  the 
Torr'  had  seemed  to  breathe.  Bare  knuckles  of  rock  stood 
out  in  the  potreros. 

At  the  orchard  lane  the  boys  struck  upon  the  first 
slight  traces  of  neglect;  trees  that  had  died  out  in  the 
great  drought  of  the  year  before  had  not  been  replaced; 
they  rotted  where  they  stood.  Here  and  there  panels 
dropped  from  the  corrals,  wagons  and  cultivators  stood 
half  out  of  the  sheds.  Whatever  Jevens  had  meant  to  do 
with  the  place,  he  was  no  farmer.  At  the  house  there  was 
no  one  about  but  Ah  Sen,  who  cackled  with  delight.  The 
pink  tassel  of  his  queue  was  replaced  by  a  black  string 
and  his  starched  white  jacket  was  neither  starched  nor 
white,  but  he  would  have  hugged  Kenneth  if  he  had  been 
allowed.  He  wished  to  know  about  everybody. 

"You  telle  you  motha,  I  likee  more  better  cook  for 
she.  You  telle  black  debble  heap  no  savey."  He  included 
the  disordered  house  in  a  wave  of  his  lean,  sallow  hands. 

It  gave  Kenneth  a  pang  to  see  Jevens 's  cheap  male 
belongings  strewn  about  the  familiar  room,  so  identified 
with  his  mother's  presence,  as  if  she  had  suffered  a  per 
sonal  violence.  He  turned  for  a  glimpse  of  his  own  room 
and  found  it  full  of  saddles  and  a  litter  of  harness. 

Ah  Sen  had  baked  a  chocolate  cake  which  he  brought 


76  THE  FORD 

out  now  with  rusty  creaking  of  affection.  The  boys  ac 
cepted  thick,  soft  slabs  of  it  and  went  out  sobered  by 
the  garden  gate.  With  one  consent  they  moved  toward 
the  spring.  Here  the  chaparral  had  been  spared  by  the 
drought;  beside  it  lay  the  dried,  stacked  brush  of  the 
year  before.  They  sat  down  on  it  looking  out  over 
Tierra  Longa.  All  at  once  Kenneth's  cake  choked  him. 
He  felt  inside  him  the  tear  of  a  creature  too  big  for  his 
breast.  It  terribly  gripped  and  shook  him. 

"Oh,  I  say,  Ken  .  .  ."  Frank  was  embarrassed.  "Say 
.  .  .  you  don't  want  to  take  it  like  that.  A  fellow  's  got 
to  get  out  and  see  things  ...  he  can't  stick  in  a  hole  like 
this  all  his  life." 

"You  shut  up!"  Kenneth  blubbered;  "that  ain't  what 
I'm  crying  for." 

Frank  dug  his  heel  into  the  damp  earth  and  took  an 
other  tack. 

"You  're  crying  for  your  mother,  that's  what." 

Kenneth  did  not  know  exactly  what  he  was  crying  for, 
but  it  seemed  likely. 

"Well,  you  ain't  got  any  to  cry  for,"  he  retorted. 

Frank  was  dazed. 

"Mine  died  when  I  was  born,"  he  admitted  rather 
soberly.  "Say,  Ken,  .  .  .  are  they  so  great  —  mothers?" 

"Uh-hu."  Kenneth  sat  up  swabbing  his  eyes  with 
his  cap.  "I  guess  you'd  cry  if  you  had  one,"  he  justified 
himself. 

Frank  carefully  fitted  his  heel  into  the  hole  he  had  dug 
for  it. 

"Say-y  you  know,  Ken  .  .  .  your  mother  used  to  kiss 
me  birthdays  and  Christmas,  —  you  know.  I  kind  o' 
liked  it." 


THE  FORD  77 

It  was  an  admission  that  somehow  extenuated  Ken 
neth's  tears.  Insensibly  they  had  got  their  arms  around 
each  other  .  .  .  but  they  started  apart  at  the  sound  of 
voices  coming  down  the  Torr'.  They  came  by  one  of  the 
old  paths  that  led  up  from  the  spring,  and  were  followed 
by  the  sound  of  Jevens  breaking  through  the  tall  chapar 
ral,  putting  back  its  interlacing  boughs  to  clear  the  way 
for  a  younger,  slighter  stranger. 

"Hello-o!"  he  cried  at  sight  of  the  boys;  Jevens  made 
a  movement  of  withdrawing  and  thought  better  of  it. 
"What  you  doing  here?"  He  recognized  Frank  and  paid 
him  the  deference  due  to  his  father's  son,  but  he  was 
plainly  disconcerted.  The  young  man  who  came  out  of 
the  trail  behind  him  was  dressed  for  the  part.  Nothing 
could  have  been  nattier  than  his  corduroys,  his  puttees, 
and  his  soft  flannel  shirt.  He  chewed  a  twig  of  buckthorn 
and  seemed  mildly  amused.  The  boys  stood  up  and 
eyed  him. 

"Well,  bub,"  he  remarked  to  Kenneth,  "you'll  know 
me  again,  I  reckon."  He  laughed  quite  cheerfully,  but 
Jevens  kept  an  anxious  countenance.  Two  or  three  times 
they  saw  him  hesitate  as  he  went  down  the  cut,  looking 
back  as  if  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  speak,  and  un 
making  it. 

"Well,  I  guess  we  will  know  him,"  Frank  resented. 

"I  did,"  said  Kenneth.  "I  saw  him  over  to  Summer- 
field!" 

"What  doing?" 

"Expertin'."  Kenneth  had  picked  up  the  word  with 
out  knowing  very  well  what  it  stood  for.  "He  came  to  see 
my  father.  His  name  is  Hartley  Daws." 

That  day  at  luncheon  they  mentioned  it  to  Frank's 


78  THE  FORD 

father.  On  the  great  lonely  ranches  a  stranger  was  a 
grateful  topic  of  conversation. 

" He's  an  oil  expert/7  Kenneth  was  proud  to  contribute. 

Mr.  Rickart  pricked  up  at  that.  "So?"  he  said.  Pres 
ently  he  laid  down  his  fork  and  spoke  to  the  Japanese  boy 
who  waited  softly  at  the  table. 

"Send  Tuyo  to  me/7  he  ordered;  and  when  a  few  min 
utes  later  the  still,  dark  halfbreed  fence  rider  drifted 
across  the  doorway  he  threw  over  his  shoulder,  as  one 
throws  scraps  to  a  dog,  commands  in  a  Spanish  Indian 
patois  of  which  the  boys  understood  only  a  word  or  two. 
They  heard  them  again,  master  and  man  conferring  in 
the  soft,  guttural  speech  late  that  evening  in  the  patio 
between  the  two  long  wings  of  the  Agua  Caliente  ranch 
house. 

The  next  morning  at  breakfast  all  their  plans  for  the 
day  were  changed  in  a  twinkling,  hearing  Frank's  father 
say  to  the  fence  rider  that  he  was  to  go  and  tell  the  wife 
of  Juan  Romero  that  El  Senor  Viejo  would  ride  over  to 
eat  chile  con  came  and  enchiladas  with  her  that  noon. 

Frank  whooped  with  delight. 

"Us,  too,  father,  —  us,  too!"  He  dashed  off  at  once 
to  tell  the  stable  man  that  they  would  n't  want  their 
ponies  that  morning.  Senora  Romero's  enchiladas  were 
worth  much  more  than  a  morning's  amusement. 

They  did  not,  however,  find  the  ride,  on  which  they 
set  out  about  ten  o'clock,  entirely  without  entertain 
ment.  Mr.  Rickart  drove  himself  in  the  high-topped 
buckboard  with  the  pedigreed  bays.  They  struck  into 
the  Summerfield  road  below  Palomitas  and  followed  it 
for  an  hour.  Here  a  faint,  old  wagon  track  swung  out 
into  the  middle  of  the  valley,  visiting  one  and  another 


THE  FORD  79 

of  the  quarter-sections  which  had  been  added  to  the  Agua 
Caliente  property  by  the  half-starved  homesteaders, 
lured  there  by  the  splendid  possibilities  of  the  land  and 
driven  from  it  by  the  inadequacy  of  human  endeavor.  It 
seemed  this  morning  that  the  owner  was  bent  on  visit 
ing  each  one  of  them. 

Rickart  was  a  tall  man,  made  to  look  shorter  by  his 
exceeding  stockiness  of  build.  The  squareness  of  his 
clean-shaven  face  was  modified  by  the  weight  he  had  put 
on  with  years.  The  nose  was  beaked  a  little;  the  lips,  if 
too  full,  were  still  finely  cut;  the  puffiness  under  the  eyes 
kept  down  with  resoluteness.  He  looked  meditative,  un 
interested,  noted  without  seeming  to  see,  and  chewed 
perpetually  on  a  seldom-lighted  cigar.  The  angle  of  this 
cigar,  as  it  went  up  and  down  with  the  working  of  his 
mind,  made  the  perfect  dial  of  his  revolving  thought. 
Now  and  then  he  halted  the  bays  to  adjust  the  fieldglass 
which  he  had  brought,  and  though  he  yielded  it  easily  to 
the  boys  when  the  impulse  seized  them  to  look,  they 
did  n't  discover  what,  if  anything,  directed  his  search 
ing  glance.  They  fell  to  counting  the  whitening  skulls  left 
from  the  drought  of  the  year  before,  and  looked  for  buz 
zards  sailing  in  the  blue.  They  were  down  opposite  the 
mole  end  of  the  Ridge,  about  a  mile  from  it,  when  Mr. 
Rickart  pointed  out  a  badger  to  them.  He  was  an  ordi 
nary  brown  badger,  scurrying  along  nose  to  the  ground 
on  a  fresh  squirrel  trail,  and  hovering  over  him  were  two 
crows  and  a  hawk,  meaning  to  be  in  at  the  kill. 

"Beat  him  to  it,"  Rickart  suggested.  The  boys,  tired 
with  the  inaction  of  the  buckboard,  piled  out  one  over 
the  other. 

They  saw  the  dust  fly  up  where  the  badger  had  started 


80  THE  FORD 

for  the  central  hill,  and  the  hawk  circling  low  to  catch  any 
hopeful  rodent  which  might  escape  by  the  side  doors  that 
came  up  at  a  distance  from  the  citadel.  The  crows  set 
tled  and  stalked  solemnly  about;  their  concern  was  with 
the  storehouse  of  grain  that  might  be  uncovered  by  the 
brown  sapper.  The  boys  were  in  time  to  snatch  the 
badger  back  by  the  tail;  there  was  no  reason  why  they 
should  have  done  this  except  that  it  was  fun  to  see  him 
snarl  and  snap,  and  it  was  as  much  as  they  were  able  to 
manage  between  them,  so  fast  he  dug,  so  quickly  he 
snapped  and  swung.  In  the  old  days  young  gods  might 
have  done  so  to  men  for  pure  joy  of  their  godhead.  Ken 
neth  had  found  a  battered  kerosene  tin  which  he  meant 
to  fasten  to  the  badger's  tail,  when  Mr.  Rickart  called 
them.  Frank  as  he  ran  administered  a  parting  kick  at 
the  poor  beast's  head  which  left  it  staggering  blindly. 

"  Ah  ;  .  .  what  you  doin'l  "  So  far  their  play  had  been 
pure  sport;  it  was  forbidden  to  kill  badgers  on  any  of  the 
ranches  on  account  of  their  service  as  squirrel  extermina 
tors,  and  Kenneth  turned  a  little  sick  at  the  needless 
cruelty. 

"What's  the  diff.?  They  ain't  on  our  land,"  Frank  re 
torted,  as  they  ran. 

They  climbed  into  the  open  end  of  the  buckboard  and 
sat  with  their  feet  hanging  out.  Kenneth  could  see  the 
badger  still  running  blindly  and  stopping;  he  thought  its 
eye  might  have  been  put  out.  That  was  how  they  missed 
noting  that  the  objective  of  Mr.  Rickart's  drive  was  a 
man  on  horseback  who  could  be  plainly  seen  now  rising 
from  behind  the  Ridge. 

They  crossed  his  path  in  about  twenty  minutes,  and 
were  made  aware  of  it  by  the  slacking  of  the  team.  They 


THE  FORD  81 

turned  to  see  Mr.  Jevens's  visitor  exchanging  greetings 
with  Frank's  father. 

Mr.  Rickart  was  looking  regretfully  at  his  unlighted 
cigar. 

"You  haven't  got  a  light  about  you  —  oh,  thanks." 
He  held  the  match  carefully  to  the  brown  roll.  He 
dropped  the  match,  however,  to  produce  the  twin  of  his 
cigar  from  his  inner  pocket,  his  special  brand.  "You're 
Hartley  Daws,  are  n't  you?  "  No  young  engineer  could  be 
such  a  fool  as  not  to  be  flattered  by  the  recognition.  "  I 
thought  I  had  seen  you  at  Summerfield.  Blakely  and 
Company  tell  me  you  did  some  good  work  for  them.  I  'm 
Rickart,  T.  Rickart  —  That's  my  little  property  over 
there."  He  included  the  whole  serried  rank  of  the  coast 
hills  in  his  gaze.  He  had  to  have  another  match  for  his 
cigar,  and  set  his  watch  by  the  stranger's. 

"Well,  it's  about  eating-time,  I  guess,"  he  remarked; 
he  gathered  up  the  reins. 

Mr.  Daws's  lunch  was  plainly  tied  behind  his  saddle 
in  a  brown  paper  that  betrayed  Ah  Sen's  hand. 

Rickart  must  have  had  a  kindly  thought  about  it,  for 
he  checked  his  team  to  say,  "I'm  going  over  to  the 
rancheria  of  one  of  my  men  for  a  Mexican  dinner.  If 
you're  a  stranger  in  these  parts  it  might  interest  you,  and 
there's  always  enough  in  the  Senora  Romero's  pots  for 
two.  Her  grandmother  was  cook  at  one  of  the  Missions, 
and  her  enchiladas  are  the  real  thing." 

The  boys  could  hear  him  discoursing  pleasantly  to 
young  Daws  as  he  rode  alongside,  of  the  old  Spanish 
regime  in  Tierra  Longa. 

They  arrived  at  the  Romeros'  rancheria,  which  lay  on 
the  Saltillos  side  close  up  under  the  Torr/  about  one,  and 


82  THE  FORD 

Ignacio  Stanislauo  was  very  glad  to  see  them.  He  had  a 
young  coyote  in  a  box  which  he  was  teaching  to  answer 
to  the  name  of  Tito. 

The  dinner  was  served  in  the  ramada,  the  long,  wattled 
hut  under  the  wild  grapevines.  Chickens  walked  about 
in  it  quite  unconcernedly  and  dogs  and  little  Romeros 
lurked  and  dodged  in  deeper  recesses  of  the  vines  amid 
which  stood  the  original  adobe  hut.  There  was  soup  with 
forcemeat  balls  and  chile,  chicken  with  rice  and  chile, 
frijoles  with  chile,  enchiladas  reeking  with  chile,  and  little 
cakes  fried  in  too  much  fat.  For  a  relish  there  were  chiles 
iepines  in  a  dish.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  Mr.  Hartley  Daws 
was  not  used  to  it,  and  that  he  was  going  to  feel  the  effect 
of  the  amount  of  black  coffee  that  he  took  to  wash  it  all 
down.  And  all  the  time  he  was  divided  between  what  he 
thought  of  Mr.  Rickart  and  what  he  was  able  to  guess  of 
what  Mr.  Rickart  thought  of  him.  Somehow  the  talk 
drifted  around  to  Jevens. 

"Made  a  tidy  pile  in  the  oil  fields,  I  understand,"  Mr. 
Rickart  was  saying  .  .  .  "You  wouldn't  think  a  man 
would  take  to  ranching  at  his  age." 

"Oh,  a  man  like  that  gets  notions,"  young  Daws  ad 
mitted.  His  manner  went  to  say,  "Would  n't  you  like  to 
know  what  notions?" 

"It's  a  wonder  he  would  n't  get  one  that  there's  oil 
on  this  side  too.  It's  much  the  same  formation." 

"There's  nothing  in  that,"  the  expert  made  haste  to 
inform  him;  "oil's  where  you  find  it." 

"Nothing  in  it  whatever;  I  had  the  whole  place  ex- 
perted  years  ago.  Funny  thing,  though;  only  goes  to 
show  how  you  can  fool  the  best  of  these  experts,  —  no 
disrespect  to  you,  Mr.  Daws,  —  but  I  had  a  man  down 


THE  FORD  83 

here  from  Gates  and  Woodward  —  you  know  Gates  and 
Woodward,  best  men  in  the  city.  Well,  there  was  a  place 
on  Palomitas,  below  Mariposa  Creek  where  Brent  had 
had  a  vat  made  —  good  stiff  clay  there  —  for  sheep  dip, 
and  I'm  blessed  if  this  fellow  did  n't  think  he'd  found  oil 
signs.  Petroleum  in  the  dip,  you  know,  —  sent  up  no  end 
of  samples,  —  had  me  going,  almost,  until  Brent  heard 
of  it  and  explained."  If  the  stranger  looked  dashed  at 
this,  it  was  doubtless  because  of  the  discredit  cast  on  his 
profession.  "  Nothing  but  sheep  dip  -  "  Rickart  laughed 
reminiscently.  "But,  of  course,"  he  came  back,  "you  fel 
lows  can  afford  to  make  a  mistake  once  in  a  while,  you  're 
so  darned  necessary  to  us.  We  have  to  have  you,  you 
know,  and  we  have  to  take  your  word  for  it.  Look  at  me 
now — '  He  launched  into  a  long  account  of  affairs  at 
Summerfield  which  the  expert  drank  up.  Whether  it  was 
the  confidential  matter  it  had  the  appearance  of  being,  it 
afforded  Hartley  Daws  those  occasions  so  dear  to  rising 
talent,  occasions  which  you  could  already  see  shaping 
behind  his  flattered  countenance,  of  saying,  "As  the  Old 
Man  remarked  to  me  .  .  .  ' 

"You  might  give  me  your  card,  you  know,"  Rickart 
was  saying  at  last  as  he  laid  down  a  bright  new  twenty- 
dollar  piece  on  the  Senora's  worn  board.  "I  expect  to  do 
a  lot  of  development  work  in  Summerfield  this  winter 
and  I  shall  be  needing  -  "  He  broke  off,  "It's  my  opin 
ion  that  the  field  slews  around  to  the  southwest,  —  of 
course  I  'm  only  a  layman,  —  but  I  'm  pretty  lucky  in  my 
guesses  —  pretty  lucky  - 

If  young  Hartley  Daws  did  n't  know  that  for  making 
money  the  Old  Man's  guesses  were  better  than  most 
men's  certain  information,  he  did  n't  know  much.  He 


84  THE  FORD 

had  pocketed  the  bit  of  pasteboard  in  exchange  for  his 
own,  with  the  look  of  a  man  who  fully  appreciated  that 
merely  to  have  exchanged  cards  with  T.  Rickart  was  a 
better  promise  of  professional  advancement  than  any 
thing  Jevens  would  pay  him  for  his  day's  work  at  Palo- 
mitas.  Whatever  else  he  had  got  by  the  interview,  he 
took  away  with  him  a  trick  of  the  Old  Man's  by  which, 
as  he  rode,  his  cigar  went  out  as  it  traveled  the  whole 
round  of  his  thought. 


VI 

THE  visit  to  Agua  Caliente  returned  Kenneth  by  the  end 
of  August  to  his  family  at  the  new  town  of  Petrolia 
sprung  up  about  the  wells  under  the  river  bluff,  there  to 
find  himself  in  the  midst  of  old  acquaintances.  The 
Scudders  were  there,  " squatted"  on  a  strip  of  tillable 
land  where  the  waste  of  the  Summerfield  Canal  turned 
back  into  the  waste  of  the  river,  with  Addie,  the  eldest, 
looking  as  newly  set  in  his  mother's  kitchen  as  the  red 
geraniums  which  shored  up  the  new-built  bungalows  in 
a  predetermined  prosperity.  There,  too,  was  Peters  in 
his  character  of  permanent  employee  of  Mr.  Brent's, 
taking  on,  as  much  of  him  as  was  visible  between  the 
black,  oily  stains,  a  deep  purple  tint  of  the  perpetual 
embarrassment  in  which  he  found  himself  involved  by 
the  proximity  of  a  "  young  gell,"  under  which  title  he 
kept  up  through  the  children  a  kind  of  third-hand  ex 
change  of  comment  and  compliment  with  Addie. 

There,  in  the  most  geraniumed  of  the  bungalows,  was 
Cornelius  Burke  as  Superintendent  of  Works,  and  there, 
if  you  choose  to  count  him  among  acquaintances,  was 
Hartley  Daws.  At  least  there  he  was  announced  to  be 
in  an  eight-by-ten  office  adjacent  to  the  old  adobe  road- 
house  that  had  once  been  a  resort  of  the  Basque  sheep 
herders  on  the  circuit  between  Summerfield  and  Naci- 
miento.  The  office  stood  close  up  under  the  bluff  where 
the  road,  winding  down  the  crumbling  face  of  it,  forded 
the  river  waste  between  the  willows,  and  the  door,  swing 
ing  open,  never  failed  to  draw  the  speculative  eye  to  the 


86  THE  FORD 

card  rack  opposite  and  the  carefully  conspicuous  display 
of  the  personal  card  of  T.  Rickart.  For  life  proceeded 
here,  with  whatever  change  of  scene  and  decoration,  as 
at  Palomitas,  under  the  shadow  of  the  Old  Man.  Success 
was  reckoned  from  him  as  distance  from  the  Torr'.  The 
Old  Man  knew  where  money  was  as  much  as  buzzards 
know  the  place  of  carrion.  If  ever  Hartley  Daws  ven 
tured  an  opinion  as  to  the  underground  direction  of  the 
arteries  from  which  the  pumps  drew  up  the  black,  stink 
ing  juices  of  an  age  decayed  to  lubricate  the  enterprise 
of  this,  it  was  estimated,  not  by  his  standing  as  an  expert, 
but  by  the  degree  to  which  he  might  be  supposed  to  be 
"in  with"  the  Rickart  Interests.  By  the  mere  device  of 
carefully  saying  nothing  when  his  patron's  name  was  men 
tioned,  Hartley  Daws  contrived  to  give  the  impression 
that  he  was  very  deeply  "in." 

This  was  the  question  upon  which  all  interest  and 
inquiry  at  Petrolia  hung,  a  question  endowed  with  the 
capacity  for  involving  Kenneth's  family  in  a  succession 
of  acute  crises  as  rumor  ran  to  and  fro  about  wells  which 
failed  and  others  that  from  narrow,  iron  throats  belched 
up  great  wasteful  fountains  —  the  question  as  to  whether 
this  were  not  the  time  and  occasion  for  Mr.  Brent  also 
to  get  "in."  Kenneth  could  see  the  whole  tension  of  his 
mother's  life  tightening  over  it  as  the  skin  tightened  on 
the  knuckles  clasping  and  unclasping  under  the  evening 
lamp  in  endless  sessions  of  anxious  talk.  It  was  as  if  the 
trouble  which  had  been  so  long  walled  up  behind  the 
boarded  door  at  Palomitas  had  been  let  loose  to  circulate 
in  the  house  at  Petrolia  where  the  thin  plank  walls  saved 
the  children  nothing  of  its  strained,  discordant  privacies. 
Whatever  went  on  in  it  could  be  heard  from  one  end  to 


THE  FORD  87 

the  other;  at  all  hours  the  young  Brents  found  them 
selves  assailed  by  the  fevers,  drops,  and  perplexities  of 
the  "boom."  They  fled  from  it  unconsciously  into  that 
absorbing  world  of  school,  where  not  always  the  most 
careful  parent  can  follow  the  young,  racing  minds;  and 
when  all  other  refuge  failed,  to  Addie.  For  Addie,  though 
she  "  talked  oil,"  talked  it  with  a  high,  unshaken  con 
fidence  in  the  Powers,  who,  if  they  had  neglected  to  do  it 
before,  could  be  counted  on  now  to  turn  the  fruitful, 
hidden  stream  squarely  under  Pop  Scudder's  twenty 
acres  of  truck  garden  in  the  pit  of  the  river  waste,  known 
as  "  the  Sink." 

' '  Cause  why?  "  she  would  demand  of  the  doubtful 
Peters  who  found  himself  greatly  put  out  at  this  juncture 
on  account  of  Mr.  Brent's  not  having  formed  any  opin 
ion  for  him  to  hold.  "  'Cause  my  Pop's  done  used  up  all 
his  rights  a-homesteadin'  and  a-timber  claimin'  and  a-pre- 
emptin'.  He's  served  his  time  at  them  things  and  served 
it  honest,  and  I  reckon  they's  a  pay-day  comin'  round, 
ain't  they?"  she  would  demand  irresistibly.  " 'Cause  it 
don't  take  more  'n  half  an  eye  to  see  that  my  Pop  ain't 
no  ways  fitted  for  nothin'  but  them  kind  of  things,  and 
I  reckon  Them  That's  Above,"  -this  was  as  near  as 
Addie  permitted  herself  the  naming  of  any  Powers,  - 
"  They  would  n't  let  a  body  serve  his  time  at  what  They  'd 
made  him  for,  without  They  would  tot  it  up  for  him  one 
of  these  days,"  she  would  conclude  with  a  triumphant 
logic  that  convinced  Peters  of  having  stood  out  against 
the  Heavenly  Host.  For  it  did  not  take  even  the  half  an 
eye  which  Addie  allowed  to  it,  to  see  in  Pop  Scudder  the 
figure  of  the  incurable,  the  temperamental  pioneer;  the 
tall,  stooping  frame,  sloped  forward,  not  so  much  with 


88  THE  FORD 

years  as  with  following  fast  on  Hope,  the  huge,  toil- 
hardened  hands  curling  in  his  lap  like  a  child's  as  he  sat 
listening  with  a  child's  bright  fixity  to  Addie's  leaping 
confidences,  the  pale,  far-seeing  eyes  looking  out  from  an 
expanse  of  whitened  whisker  as  from  the  mist  of  his  own 
dreams. 

Addie  had  a  way  of  heightening  the  prophetic  effect  of 
her  utterances  by  always  speaking  of  him  in  the  third  per 
son  even  in  his  presence. 

"He's  been  through  such  a  lot,  Pop  has,  it  don't  seem 
like  it's  worth  anybody's  time  to  go  through  so  much 
without  They're  taking  notice  of  it,  and  I  do  say,  if  They 
ain't,  that  this  is  the  jumpin'-off  place  for  my  Pop. 
He'll  just  go  plunk!" 

The  tone  with  which  she  dropped  her  parent  into  the 
gulf,  all  her  talk  shot  through  with  the  knowledge  of 
imminent,  approachable  Powers,  seized  upon  the  Brent 
children  with  dreadful,  delicious  shivers.  It  was  alive 
with  what,  wholly  unexpressed,  had  lurked  for  them  in 
the  deep  lanes  of  the  chaparral,  around  the  sentient, 
breathing  Torr'.  Evenings  they  would  escape  from  the 
endless  gurgle  of  oil  about  the  supper-table  to  snuggle  on 
either  side  of  her  on  the  back  stoop,  with  perhaps  Peters 
as  an  appreciative  but  embarrassed  third,  to  re-immerse 
themselves  in  the  epic  of  Pop  Scudder  as  in  the  essence  of 
the  Wild. 

Kenneth  admired  Addie  immensely.  Her  young  body, 
slanted  by  years  of  homesteading,  had  the  poise  of  a  pine 
tree  shaped  by  the  wind;  the  flare  of  her  bright-burned 
cheeks  and  sun-streaked  hair  reminded  him  of  the  gera 
niums.  He  had  vague  notions  of  setting  out  with  her  some 
day  in  a  white-topped  settler's  wagon  on  the  track  of 


THE  FORD  89 

ancient  adventure,  toward  a  claim  which  always  turned 
out  to  be  Palomitas.  Times  the  dream  would  take  and 
hold  him  all  the  night,  and  though  he  could  not  remember 
more  than  a  fleeting  fragment  of  it,  he  would  wake  with  a 
warm  tingling  all  through  his  body,  which  returned  upon 
him  at  moments  of  the  day  when  he  would  think  of  Addie. 
He  thought  of  confiding  this  singular  experience  to  Peters, 
with  whom,  in  default  of  other  companionship,  he  had 
grown  exceedingly  friendly. 

" You're  very  fond  of  Addie,  ain't  you,  Peters? "  he 
chose  for  a  beginning  one  clear  Sunday  morning  when 
that  born  servitor  was  pretending,  to  save  himself  from 
boredom,  that  the  stilled  pumping  engine  really  required 
his  tinkering  over  it. 

"Who?  ME?"  Geraniums  were  nothing  to  the  color 
of  Peter's  indignation.  "Now,  looky  here,  young  feller," 
—  Peters  had  never  called  him  that  before,  it  was  his 
utmost  term  of  reprobation,  —  "who  put  that  idee  in 
your  head?" 

"Oh,  nobody,  —  but  you  know  you  do  stay  a  good 
while  when  father  sends  you  up  to  the  house  for  any 
thing,"  Kenneth  defended  himself. 

"  'Cause  why,  young  feller," —  Peters's  tone  allowed  its 
full  measure  to  the  blighting  epithet,-  "Cause  I  got 
business  there,  that's  why."  He  thumped  so  violently 
at  the  vitals  of  the  suffering  engine  that  Kenneth  felt  his 
friendly  impulse  at  fault. 

"Well,  of  course,  Peters  — " 

That  individual  withdrew  his  still  inflamed  counte 
nance  from  the  belly  of  the  engine  to  complete  his  justi 
fication. 

"Of  course,  young  feller,  I  got  the  highest  respeck  for 


90  THE  FORD 

that  young  gell,  —  I  don't  know  as  there 's  any  young 
gell  I  got  a  higher  for,  she's  a  young  gell  as  any  man 
might  respeck,  —  but  when  it  comes  to  bein'  fond  of 
her  — "  Peters  hid  the  emotion  which  the  suspicion 
occasioned  him  in  the  inwards  of  the  engine. 

"Well,  of  course,  if  you  aren't,  Peters,"  Kenneth  ex 
cused,  "you  can't  help  it,  can  you?  I  just  thought  I'd 
ask."  By  some  queer  twist  of  the  male  consciousness 
beginning  to  wake  in  him,  he  discovered  that  if  Peters 
was  not  fond  of  Addie  he  was  not  so  very  fond  of  her  him 
self.  He  sat  on  a  gunnysack  wrapped  about  one  of  the 
lead  pipes  and  kicked  the  sand  until  Peters  came  out  of 
the  engine  again  to  say:  — 

"You  might  mention  it  to  her,  you  know,  —  how  much 
I  respeck  her,  —  if  you  was  any  way  mentionin'  me." 

"But  I  don't  think  I  will,  Peters,  because  if  I  did  she 
might  ask  me  how  I  came  to  know,  and  then  I  might  have 
to  tell  her.  And  a  person  don't  like  to  be  told  that  a  per 
son  is  n't  fond  of  them  if  they  are  not  fond  of  a  person 
themselves."  He  considered  that  he  had  made  himself 
perfectly  clear  and  if  Peters  did  n't  understand  him  it 
would  be  due  to  his  not  having  an  affectionate  nature. 
Kenneth  felt  that  he  had  such  a  nature  himself  and  that 
it  had  received  a  check. 

By  degrees  that  winter  the  situation  at  Petrolia  cleared 
to  Kenneth's  opening  mind.  He  discovered  lines  of  di 
rection  in  the  human  interest  there,  as  well  defined  as  the 
network  of  iron  piping  that  ran  from  well  to  well  and  to 
the  bat-ribbed,  iron  roofs  of  the  reservoirs  squatting  in 
every  coign  of  the  hills  sucking,  sucking  —  He  developed 
a  kind  of  double  consciousness  toward  it,  of  public,  boy 
ish  interest  in  the  activities  of  the  oil  fields,  and  a  con- 


THE  FORD  91 

tained,  secret  loathing.  He  knew  to  a  certainty  the  out 
put  in  barrels  of  every  gusher,  and  attended  with  the 
Burke  boys  the  installation  of  every  new  engine  and  iron- 
riveted  tank;  but  there  were  days  when  he  would  dodge 
away  from  the  others  after  school  to  climb  to  the  comb  of 
hills  beyond  the  settlement,  from  which  he  could  make 
out  the  winter-capped  tip  of  the  Torr'.  Here  he  would 
walk  for  hours  full  of  an  absorbed,  contemplative  pleas 
ure  in  which  the  piercing  of  the  sod  by  the  first  faint 
spears  of  the  brodea  marked  an  epoch,  and  the  finding 
of  the  first  meadow-lark's  nest  a  momentous  discovery. 
As  he  returned  full  of  the  importance  of  these  things,  the 
talk  of  the  supper-table  fretted  him  with  its  inconse 
quences.  He  would  slip  away  after  it  to  the  back  porch 
to  exchange  contraband  items  of  news  with  Anne  as  to 
the  progress  of  wild  bloom  and  the  thin,  ascending  spires 
of  dust  that  marked  where  wandering  flocks  laid  bare  the 
hills  to  the  corroding  weather.  It  was  after  such  evenings 
as  this  that  he  would  dream  of  Addie  and  the  white- 
topped  settler's  wagon  making  way  over  those  same  hills 
to  the  land  of  unproved  delights. 

Sometimes  on  Sundays  his  father  would  Walk  with  him 
in  that  direction,  and  by  wordless  consent  they  would 
make  for  any  point  miles  away  where  they  saw  the  dust  of 
a  flock  rising,  to  refresh  themselves  with  the  familiar 
knowledge  of  sheep,  to  exchange,  with  the  nearly  in 
articulate  French  and  Basque  herders,  news  of  the  far 
pastures,  of  lambing-time  and  the  fluctuating  prices  of 
wool.  Sometimes  they  would  sit  for  long,  wordless  ses 
sions  on  a  summer  slope  with  their  backs  to  Petrolia, 
fronting  the  high,  treeless  barrows  that  lead  the  eye  away 
inland,  handling  the  rich,  crumbly  loam  of  the  hills  as  a 


92  THE  FORD 

prospector  fumbles  pay-dirt  between  his  palm  and 
thumb,  tasting  its  possibilities.  On  such  occasions  they 
renewed  that  common  consciousness  of  the  earth  which 
had  passed  between  them  on  the  Torr'  with  the  force  of 
a  revelation.  Drought  and  disaster  could  pass  away,  and 
the  rending,  gutting  hands  of  men,  but  the  earth  would 
not  pass  away  nor  the  fullness  thereof. 

Life  lets  in  light  to  men  at  least  once,  —  to  women 
many  times,  —  but  to  men,  always  once;  in  the  disturb 
ance  of  equilibrium  between  youth  and  adulthood  the 
gates  are  up  and  the  floods  come  in. 

If  there  had  been  anybody  to  read  and  help  him  shape 
his  life  to  what  that  deep  sense  of  the  waiting  earth  and 
the  will  to  abide  by  it,  must  mean,  this  would  have  been 
another  story  —  but  just  because  it  is  so  common  an 
occurrence  for  Life  to  speak  to  youth  at  this  time  and  in 
this  fashion  —  Oh,  Youth,  Youth!  we  say,  and  the  word 
falls  unheeded. 

Sometimes  at  this  period  the  feel  of  the  purposeful 
earth  would  get  through  to  him  even  at  Petrolia,  when 
the  purple  dusk  crept  up  along  the  old  river  track  and 
the  wind  would  be  crooning  about  the  tall,  iron  trees  — 
for  does  not  iron  come  up  out  of  the  earth  even  as  oak 
and  pine?  —  and  the  little  red  spark,  nesting  in  each, 
twinkled  friendlily.  Every  half-hour  the  Summerfield 
trolley  would  peer  from  the  top  of  the  bluff  with  its  one 
white  eye,  only  to  scutter  away  with  a  shrill,  insect  whine, 
and  the  derricks  .would  talk  together  of  the  absurdities 
and  limitations  of  men.  But  by  day,  and  especially  in 
the  house,  Kenneth  found  himself  drawn  into  the  coil  of 
a  practical  perplexity  over  which  Addie's  confidence  in 
the  Powers  floated  as  a  bright,  morning-fluttered  flag. 


THE  FORD  93 

"Tears  like  you're  kind  of  losin'  your  grip  on  Provi 
dence,  Mis'  Brent,"  she  would  say  to  that  lady  in  the 
intimacies  of  the  day's  domesticity,  in  which  no  hints  of 
her  mistress  ever  taught  her  she  was  not  a  concerned  and 
indispensable  item.  "An7  you  church  brought  up,  too," 
she  reproached. 

"I've  been  waiting  on  Providence  fifteen  years,"  Mrs. 
Brent  answered  her,  as  every  one  finally  did  have  to 
answer  Addie,  on  her  own  ground. 

"Hoo!  What's  fifteen  years  —  when  you  think  of  my 
Pop?  "  Addie  set  her  arms  akimbo  on  her  slim,  slant  body 
and  prepared  to  expound  the  policy  of  the  Powers. 
" Seems  like  They"  —  the  impersonal  plural  referred  to 
but  one  thing  in  Addie's  vernacular  —  "They  just  let 
you  go  along  a  piece  by  yourself,  kind  of  stumblin',  an' 
sometimes  it's  a  good  long  piece.  But  by  and  by,  when 
you've  come  to  the  end  of  your  string,  They  step  in  and 
save  you.  They  just  got  to.  An' that 's  right  where  Pop 
is  now,  Mis'  Brent;  he  ain't  good  for  nary  'nother  move 
—  'n  if  you're  looking  fur  one  of  the  same  to  put  with 
him,  why,  that's  Mr.  Brent." 

"Oh!"  —  Mr.  Brent's  wife  bit  her  lip  over  it;  "so  you 
think  that  Mr.  Brent  is  at  the  end  of  his  string,  do  you? 
Well,  it's  not  your  place  to  be  running  down  your  em 
ployer,  and  besides,  Mr.  Brent  - 

"My  land! "  cried  the  unsnubbable  Addie;  "  if  you  was 
doin'  that  well  at  Palomitas,  why  did  you  leave  it?" 
Having  reduced  her  mistress  to  silence  and  folded  the 
tablecloth  by  catching  the  middle  of  the  hem  in  her  strong 
white  teeth  and  bringing  her  arms  together  at  the  ends 
of  it,  she  returned  to  her  exposition.  "If  ever  there  was 
two  men  cut  off  n  the  same  piece  of  cloth  —  though 


94  THE  FORD 

maybe  they  was  different  ends  of  it  —  it 's  Mr.  Brent  and 
my  Pop.  Both  of  'em  just  got  to  be  monkeyin'  with  the 
dirt  —  and  a-dreamin'  and  a-seein'  the  end  of  things  and 
a-skippin'  the  middle.  Only  Pop,  he  could  n't  seem  to 
get  a-holt  nowhar,  and  if  Mr.  Brent  could  n't  make  it 
with  the  holt  he  got  —  why,  there  ye  are!"  There  they 
are  she  meant,  in  a  case  so  similar  that  perhaps  Mrs. 
Brent  was  glad  to  sink  the  comparison  in  the  saving  con 
solation  of  Addie's  confident  "An'  of  course  they  got  to 
make  it  now;  there's  nothin'  else  for  'em." 

That  Pop  Scudder  advanced  in  the  public  considera 
tion,  as  the  popular  belief  in  the  direction  of  the  oil-bear 
ing  beds  traveled  toward  his  squatter's  claim,  was  ap 
parent  even  to  the  children,  in  the  degrees  by  which  he 
moved  from  the  back  porch,  where  he  came  to  see  Addie 
of  evenings,  to  the  front,  where  he  was  openly  in  con 
sultation  with  Mr.  Brent.  There  grew  to  be  a  little  coterie 
of  them  meeting  there  by  the  end  of  the  rains :  men  who 
lived  forever  at  the  fringes  of  affairs,  snatching  their  liv 
ing  from  unconsidered  acres,  that  in  their  turn  became 
considered  and  then  not  theirs  —  Jim  Hand,  who  had 
fought  so  long  for  his  surplus  water  right  that  he  fought 
now  even  in  his  talk,  his  voice  big  and  belligerent;  Sol- 
dumbehere,  who  had  seen  the  wild  pastures  close  in  home 
steads  and  forest  reserves  until  almost  his  only  undis 
puted  bit  was  the  shearing-corral  close  up  under  the  bluff 
below  Scudder's  truck  garden;  and  other  holders  of  con 
tested  rights,  who  came  or  ceased  coming  as  their  esti 
mate  of  the  chances  of  fortune  in  this  combination  varied. 
They  talked  much,  and  always  of  the  same  thing;  were 
they,  or  were  they  not,  in  the  oil  district,  and  if  they  were, 
what  should  .they  do  about  it?  They  must  have  Capital; 


THE  FORD  95 

and  if  they  did,  such  was  their  deep  conviction,  Capital 
in  the  end  would  have  them.  Capital  went  about  seeking 
whom  it  might  devour,  yet  such  was  their  strange  illu 
sion  about  it  that  they  believed  that  if  once  they  could 
lay  hands  on  it,  Capital  could  be  made  to  run  in  their 
harness,  breed  in  their  pastures.  To  those  who  owned 
Capital,  and  set  their  brand  upon  it,  it  ate  out  of  the 
hand,  but  its  proper  nutriment  was  the  content  of  poor 
men's  pockets.  They  railed  upon  it  as  wolves  that  de 
file  the  corners  of  the  woodman's  hut,  and  it  was  the  sum 
of  all  their  desire.  All  but  Pop  Scudder.  Expecting  noth 
ing  but  to  lose,  he  went  through  all  the  brave  forms  of 
resistance  as  a  habit.  He  was  no  more  embittered  than  a 
squirrel.  He  was  constitutionally  a  homesteader. 

The  real  question,  of  course,  was  whether  there  was 
oil  under  your  land  or  was  n't.  If  the  fields  extended  to 
ward  the  Sink,  then  the  price  of  Palomitas,  which  still 
burned  in  Mr.  Brent's  pocket,  would  make  an  even  bal 
ance  to  the  titles  of  the  land.  It  would  become  Capital; 
and  the  salt,  barren  acres  an  Investment.  All  this,  more 
or  less  comprehended,  played  over  the  heads  of  the  Brent 
children  without  superseding  the  immediate  interest  of 
Kenneth's  being  promoted  in  arithmetic  and  Teacher 
said  he  must  have  a  new  geog'aphy.  It  remained  for  the 
boy,  however,  to  give  the  final  fillip  to  the  great  indeci 
sion. 

That  winter  the  tule  fogs  came  in  to  Petrolia.  Not 
every  year,  but  fitfully,  season  by  season,  thick,  white, 
low-creeping  fogs  gathered  above  the  flat  tulares  of  the 
San  Joaquin  Valley,  and  beleaguered  the  bluffs  of  Sum- 
merfield.  Rarely  they  rose  to  the  level  of  the  town,  but 
this  year  they  inundated  Petrolia;  men  abroad  in  them 


96  THE  FORD 

too  much,  hot  with  the  fevers  of  the  "boom"  and  chilled 
from  standing  about  on  the  damp  ground,  died  of  an  in 
fection  which  seemed  to  travel  on  the  thick  medium  of 
the  fog.  The  fear  of  it  drove  Mr.  Brent's  visitors  into  the 
living-room,  where,  between  her  sense  of  their  social  un- 
fitness  and  her  anxiety  to  hear  all  that  went  on  among 
them,  they  were  a  source  of  many  restless  sallies  on  the 
part  of  Mrs.  Brent  and  a  great  annoyance  to  Kenneth, 
who  found  he  could  n't  do  his  examples  with  the  talk 
going  on,  and  yet,  in  the  presence  of  his  father,  dare  n't 
ask  Anne  to  do  them  for  him.  He  had  tried  that  before 
and  knew  what  came  of  it.  He  sat  idly  and  listened  to 
the  high,  quarreling  voices  of  big  Jim  Hand,  and  idly 
moved  his  pencil  over  the  slate,  moistening  it  from  time 
to  time  in  his  mouth,  an  old,  half-forgotten,  childish 
trick.  Something  in  the  shape  of  the  blot  he  was  making 
led  him  to  complete  the  figure  of  a  badger  and  so  sup 
plied  the  subconscious  link  of  memory. 

"If  we  could  get  a  line  on  Rickart,"  big  Jim  was  saying, 
"that'd  clinch  it."  There  was  that  in  his  manner  which 
implied  that  such  a  line  was  to  be  got,  but  somebody  was 
neglectful.  It  was  perfectly  in  the  air  that  this  somebody 
was  Kenneth's  father.  Brent,  by  reason  of  his  employ 
ment,  was  supposed  to  be  in  a  position  to  know  Rickart's 
plans,  and  not  only  had  he  failed  to  tap  that  source  of 
information,  but  a  quixotic  notion  led  him  to  shrug  off  all 
discussion  of  it.  He  lifted  his  shoulders  now  in  the  habit 
ual  gesture,  which  dropped  half-finished  in  a  realization 
of  its  futility  before  men  at  whose  keyhole  Rickart  was 
always  figuratively  listening  and  alert. 

A  sudden  little  impatient  movement  of  his  mother's 
brought  out  in  Kenneth's  mind  words  that  seemed  to 


THE  FORD  97 

pop  up  like  automatons  to  the  jerking  of  a  string,  words 
in  his  mother's  voice,  high  and  exasperated  —  " What's 
the  use,  Steven  .  .  .  what  are  we  here  for  if  it  is  n't  to  find 
out  ...  to  find  a  way  in  .  .  ."  He  saw  her  shut  her  lips 
over  them  now,  but  he  knew  they  were  quite  audible 
words  for  him  and  Anne  and  their  father;  the  recognition 
of  them  flashed  electrically  between  those  three. 

"An'  Burke  won't  give  up  nothin',"  Hand  quarreled 
on;  "he  must  know  what  the  Old  Man  thinks  about  it; 
though  he's  buyin'  east  and  west,  one  of  'em  is  a  blind." 

The  two  ends  of  memory  made  connection  for  a  mo 
ment  in  Kenneth's  mind. 

"Ho,  7  know!"  the  words  slipped  out  almost  under  the 
compulsion  of  his  knowing  that  he  ought,  perhaps,  not 
to  have  uttered  them.  He  felt  himself  suddenly  embar 
rassed  by  the  centering  of  attention  on  him  and  rushed 
on  to  brave  it  down.  "Frank's  father  told  Hartley  Daws 
it  swings  south  by  west  ...  I  heard  him.  .  .  .  Over  at 
Romero's,  having  a  Spanish  dinner,"  he  conceded  to  the 
eager  question.  "'Nacio's  got  a  young  coyote  he's  tam 
ing,"  he  volunteered  further,  but  found  that  the  detail 
lacked  interest. 

"What  were  Hartley  Daws  and  Mr.  Rickart  doing 
there?" 

"Talking  oil."  He  believed  this  to  be  quite  the  case, 
but  Mr.  Brent  held  him  down  with  a  question  as  firmly  as 
with  a  hand. 

"And  you  heard  him  say  he  thought  the  oil  develop 
ment  would  be  south  by  west?" 

Kenneth  nodded.  "Hartley  Daws  said  so  too,"  he 
added  in  confirmation,  since  his  father  seemed  to  require 
it;  he  had  no  idea  that  he  had  given  them  the  impression 


98  THE  FORD 

that  Rickart  and  the  oil  expert  had  come  together  by 
intention.  Something  had  happened  in  the  room  that 
seemed  to  make  the  occasion  momentous.  Kenneth  felt 
it  swell  in  memory;  "And  Frank's  father  took  some 
papers  out  of  his  pocket  and  gave  Hartley  Daws  one,"  — 
he  did  not  really  know  that  this  had  been  a  business  card, 
—  "and  —  and  there  was  money  on  the  table."  If  they 
found  the  incident  so  significant  as  all  that,  of  course  it 
must  have  had  such  a  significance  in  the  beginning.  Ken 
neth  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  felt  himself  a  valued 
contributor  to  the  evening's  entertainment. 

There  was  a  silence  through  which  Jim  Hand's  big 
voice  blustered  like  a  bee  through  a  summer  afternoon. 

"Well,  in  that  case,  Brent,  I  don't  see  what  you  are 
waiting  for." 

"Well,  gentlemen,  I  don't  quite  see  myself." 

They  were  waiting  for  something,  though;  they  were 
all  tense  with  it.  One  of  the  men  strange  to  Kenneth 
seemed  to  have  supplied  it  when  he  said,  "What's  the 
matter  with  getting  a  move  on  us,  then?  Once  you  know 
where  the  stuff  is,  you're  losing  money  every  day  it's  in 
the  ground." 

"Daws  will  let  us  have  the  outfit  as  cheap  as  anybody." 
Hand's  voice  was  at  strife  even  with  his  cheerful  an 
nouncement.  "I  guess  an  expert  that's  good  enough  for 
the  Old  Man 's  good  enough  for  the  Homestead  Develop 
ment  Company." 

Something  seemed  to  be  concluded  as  the  men  stood 
up  to  go.  Kenneth's  mother  stood  up  with  them;  she  was 
standing  still  behind  his  chair  as  Mr.  Brent  came  back 
from  showing  them  to  the  door.  Her  hand  went  out  to 
his  arm  and  rested  there. 


THE  FORD  99 

"Well,  Molly—?1 

"Oh,  Steven,  —  I  suppose  it  is  the  thing  to  do  — " 

"Anyway,  it's  done  —  that  is,  it's  begun." 

"And  Mr.  Rickart  knew  all  this  time  and  wouldn't 
let  you  in,  after  all.  It 's  too  mean,  I  think,  —  the  way 
Cornelius  has  acted  —  and  the  way  I ' ve  put  up  with 
her—" 

"But  he  mightn't  have  known  anything  himself, 
Molly.  I  told  you  Rickart  only  put  him  here  to  let  him 
down  easy — " 

"It's  no  excuse  for  his  trying  to  put  you  down  — 
though  perhaps  it  is  with  that  kind  of  a  person." 

This  was  n't  the  first  Kenneth  had  heard  of  the 
changed  relation  that  had  come  about  between  them  and 
the  Burkes;  hadn't  the  twins  tried  to  put  it  over  him 
more  than  once  on  the  ground  that  his  father  was  working 
for  their  father! 

"But  he  has  n't  really  — "  Mr.  Brent  protested. 

"Well,  she  has."  Mrs.  Brent  laughed.  "And  she  can't 
understand  how  I  get  on  so  well  in  society;  the  other  day 
at  Mrs.  Steidley's  reception  she  said  — " 

"Go  to  bed,  son." 

Kenneth  found  himself  usually  sent  out  of  the  room 
before  interesting  human  bits  of  that  nature.  He  calcu 
lated,  as  he  kissed  his  parents  good-night,  that  there 
would  be  time  for  Anne  to  work  his  examples  for  him 
going  over  to  school  next  morning  on  the  trolley. 

Within  a  week  it  was  known  at  Petrolia  that  land 
holders  in  what  was  known  as  "the  Sink  "  had  formed  a 
Development  Company  with  Mr.  Brent  coming  in  on  a 
cash  basis,  and  that  operations  would  begin  immediately. 

The  Brents  were  "in,"  oh,  quite  completely  and  over- 


100  THE  FORD 

whelmingly  "in."  It  leaked  out  in  this  connection  that 
the  venture  had  been  determined  by  a  private  tip  from 
the  Old  Man.  For  all  you  knew  Brent  was  merely  a 
blind,  and  it  was  really  Bickart's  capital.  Look  at  the 
way  their  kids  had  been  visiting  back  and  forth  —  writ 
ing  letters,  too!  Of  course  the  Brents  were  "in"  —  on 
the  innermost  inside. 

With  a  movement  like  the  rush  of  passengers  to  the 
side  of  a  listing  ship,  all  the  floating  interest  of  Petrolia 
rushed  in  the  direction  of  the  Sink. 


VII 

IN  the  middle  of  the  Easter  holidays,  one  of  those  clear 
days  when  the  sky  went  high  and  higher  and  great, 
rounded  clouds  nosed  about  the  rim  of  the  hills,  Kenneth 
was  making  a  kennel  for  his  dog  on  the  far  side  of  the 
house  when  he  heard  the  honk  of  a  motor,  from  the  hol 
low  below  the  Rickart  pumps.  It  was  a  sound  that 
brought  everybody  to  the  windows,  for  in  those  days 
private  motors  were  still  a  matter  of  rare  curiosity,  and 
this  car  in  its  glittering  newness,  as  it  skimmed  and 
tilted  over  the  undulating  surfaces  of  Petrolia,  was  like 
some  bright,  insect-eyed  creature  of  the  day.  Kenneth 
saw  it  wheel  into  position  before  the  shed  which  answered 
for  Burke's  offices,  and  all  the  idlers  running  toward  it  as 
ants  will  run  about  some  shining-backed  beetle  dropped 
in  their  midst. 

He  recognized  Mr.  Rickart  getting  heavily  out  of  the 
car,  but  Frank  must  have  dropped  out  on  the  other  side, 
for  it  was  not  until  Kenneth  had  covered  half  the  distance 
from  the  house  that  he  saw  him.  He  gave  a  whoop  and 
began  to  run;  something  happened  to  his  heart  that  sent 
it  flooding  all  through  him,  warm  and  watery.  A  rod  or 
two  from  the  motor  it  began  to  beat  again,  queerly  in  a 
hollow  place  far  below  him,  for  he  saw  that  Frank  had 
not  moved  toward  him  at  all.  It  occurred  to  Kenneth  that 
he  would  go  quite  around  to  the  other  side  of  the  car 
as  though  a  view  of  it  had  been  his  only  objective,  but 
he  found  himself  pulled  suddenly,  irresistibly  to  Frank's 
side. 


102  .THE  FORD 

"Hello,  Ken!" 

"Hello  yourself — !"  He  was  conscious  of  Frank's 
quick  paleness,  and  their  hands  were  together,  they 
scarcely  knew  how. 

"Did  n't  you  know  it  was  me,  kid?" 

"I  guess  so  — "  Kenneth  felt  the  need  of  a  diversion. 
He  laid  his  hand  on  the  wheel  guard  to  steady  himself. 
"This  yours?" 

"Ain't  she  a  beaut?"  Frank  began  to  explain  the 
motor  to  him  quite  fully. 

"Does  your  father  let  you  run  it?"  To  Kenneth  this 
was  the  most  enviable  lot. 

Frank  looked  about  to  see  if  the  chauffeur  were  listen 
ing  before  he  committed  himself. 

"I  guess  I  could  handle  it  —  "he  was  beginning  when 
Mr.  Rickart  came  out  of  the  office  followed  by  Burke,  and 
ordered  the  boys  to  pile  in.  Kenneth  would  n't  for  worlds 
have  admitted  that  he  was  scared,  as  the  car  bumped 
away  over  the  road  reticulated  with  half-buried  iron 
piping.  They  made  the  circle  of  Petrolia  and  swung  away 
toward  the  Sink.  Mr.  Rickart's  cigar  stood  at  the  corner 
of  his  mouth  in  an  upward  angle;  he  rolled  it  from  time 
to  time  as  he  asked  a  question  of  his  Superintendent. 
Kenneth  could  n't  help  hearing  as  they  slowed  down 
opposite  the  Homestead  Development  Company's  bor 
ings.  He  tried  to  hear,  in  fact;  for  was  not  his  own  father 
in  the  same  relation  to  the  wells  in  the  Sink  as  Mr.  Rick- 
art  toward  those  in  Petrolia.  He  would  have  liked  to 
introduce  them  as  he  had  seen  his  father  do  to  strangers 
with  a  wave  of  the  hand,  but  Burke  had  forestalled  him. 

The  first  boring  had  been  made  on  Scudder's  land;  be 
yond  the  derrick  where  the  men  were  still  busy  at  it,  they 


THE  FORD  103 

could  see  Jim  Hand's  scraper  banking  up  a  hollow  for  the 
oil  which  was  expected  daily  to  come  bubbling  out  of  the 
iron-throated  well.  They  heard  him  quarreling  with  his 
team  over  the  unfamiliar  whir  of  the  motor. 

"  What  have  they  got?"  Rickart  demanded  of  the  Su 
perintendent:  bulletins  of  the  borings  were  as  regular  as 
from  the  bedside  of  royalty. 

" Saturate  sand;  she's  like  to  gush  on  'em  any  day 
now." 

"That  all  they  got  for  taking  care  of  it?"  The  Old 
Man  waved  his  hand  toward  the  shallow  in  the  sand  that 
Hand  was  scooping  with  his  one  plough  team. 

"  They  're  not  counting  on  having  to  store  it — " 
Burke  began. 

"What  are  they  counting  on,  then?" 

"On  the  pipe  line  .  .  .  Bailey  says  it'll  be  finished  the 
end  of  this  week;  they'll  have  to  sell  quick,  they  need  the 
money." 

"And  they're  counting  on  the  pipe  line,  eh?" 

"Ain't  we  all?"  Burke  counter-questioned.  "The 
tanks  don't  carry  no  more  than  thirty  per  cent  of  the 
output." 

He  referred  to  the  line  of  tank  cars  that  looped  about 
Petrolia  from  the  valley  road,  like  some  sort  of  Gargan 
tuan-joint  worm  of  the  same  prehistoric  period  that 
produced  the  derricks. 

Mr.  Rickart  chewed  his  cigar. 

"How  deep's  Brent  in?"  he  wished  to  know,  chop 
ping  the  words  short  as  if  by  that  means  he  would 
have  prevented  them  reaching  the  alert  ears  of  Brent's 
boy. 

"All  in;  the  others  had  nothing  but  land." 


104  THE  FORD 

"And  they're  counting  on  the  pipe  line."  Something 
in  the  tone  caused  Burke  to  give  a  quick  look  at  him  and 
another  at  the  boy. 

Kenneth  had  an  impulse  to  speak  up  smartly  and  say, 
what  of  it,  since  the  pipe  line  was  n't  old  Rickart's  any 
way;  but  dizzying  loops  which  the  car  executed  among 
the  gopher  hills  absorbed  him. 

They  swung  back  toward  the  bluff  and  stopped  before 
Hartley  Daws's  office. 

Burke  climbed  out  here. 

"I  reckon  this  is  as  far  as  we  go,  Ken,"  he  reminded  the 
boy  who  was  caught  up  in  the  rapture  of  flying. 

"Me,  too,"  Frank  insisted;  "I'll  come  home  on  the 
trolley." 

Mr.  Rickart  nodded.  "I  guess  you  two  got  a  lot  of 
talk  coming."  He  smiled  on  them  not  unkindly. 

Instead  of  turning  back,  however,  toward  the  Brents' 
house,  Frank  led  the  way  across  the  low  bridge  and  along 
the  willow  border.  "A  man's  got  to  have  a  chance  to 
smoke  sometime,"  —  he  flourished  a  cigarette  case,  — 
"have  one,  old  sport."  Oh,  there  was  an  air  of  cities 
about  all  he  did;  Kenneth  found  it  irresistible. 

"I  have  n't  tried  it  yet  — "  he  began,  but  he  held  out 
his  hand. 

"All  the  fellows  in  our  school  do.  But  you  bet  we  keep 
it  from  Prexy,  all  right,  all  right.  These  cost  me  fifty  the 
box,  and  maybe  I  don't  have  to  do  the  Japanese  juggle 
with  my  allowance  to  keep  Dad  from  finding  it  out.  Gee, 
but  this  is  something  like!"  He  leaned  back  against  the 
foot  of  the  bluff  and  blew  rings.  What  he  did  n't  know 
about  himself  was  that,  quite  as  much  as  the  cigarette, 
he  loved  thevflavor  of  secret  indulgence.  Smoking  in  pub- 


THE  FORD  105 

lie  would  cease  to  be  a  sporty  thing  to  do  and  become 
merely  a  habit. 

Kenneth  whiffed  at  his  cigarette  gingerly  and  wished 
there  were  not  such  a  sickish  smell  of  the  waste  oil  and 
the  damp  earth  under  the  willows.  The  sun  shone  down 
on  them  warmly  and  the  leaves  kept  up  a  soft,  secret 
rustle. 

The  occasion  seemed  one  for  confidences  and  Frank 
rose  to  it. 

"Well,  old  sport,"  he  quizzed,  "how's  the  girls?" 

"The  g—  Oh,  they're  all  right!"  That  was  it,  the 
tone  had  done  it;  they  were  not  just  Anne  and  Virginia; 
they  were  "the  Girls."  Any  gentleman  of  thirteen  will 
understand. 

"'S  Virginia  as  good  a  looker  as  she  used  to  be?" 

"Pretty  fair."  Kenneth  had  n't,  to  tell  the  truth,  re 
marked  his  sister's  friend  lately;  the  phrase  he  copied 
from  his  father,  and  felt  that  he  was  getting  on  ex 
tremely  well. 

"Gee,  but  there's  some  swell  skirts  around  Oakdale," 
Frank  let  him  know. 

All  at  once  Kenneth  realized  that  this  was  what  he  had 
been  waiting  for.  Frank  could  understand  him  as  no  one 
else  had  done,  not  even  Peters. 

"Addie  Scudder's  working  at  our  house  —  she's 
pretty  —  kind  of  ..." 

"Oh,  you  kid!"  Frank  tilted  his  hat  against  the  sun 
and  looked  at  his  friend  under  the  brim  of  it  as  a  gentle 
man  should. 

Kenneth  found  himself  richly  embarrassed  by  the  im 
plication.  He  leaned  his  head  against  the  bluff  to  correct 
a  swimming  tendency,  and  met  it  as  gallantly  as  he  was 


106  THE  FORD 

able.  "I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  Addle,"  he  an 
nounced  gravely  —  "the  greatest  possible  respect  for 
her." 

"Oh,  of  course — "  Frank  admitted  the  extenuating 
fact  with  a  wave  of  the  hand. 

They  looked  at  each  other,  a  little  at  a  loss  how  to  go 
on  with  the  conversation;  they  lay  still  and  soaked  in  the 
warm  light. 

It  came  upon  them  there  between  a  tremor  and  a  sound 

—  a  dull  rushing  which  grew  into  a  steady  roar  as  of  wind 
0r  water  or  the  bellowing  of  the  plundered  earth.  They 
could  n't  make  it  out,  —  a  sound  so  unrelated  to  the  day, 

—  but  they  heard  shouting  at  the  bridge,  astounded, 
frightened.    They  understood  that.    They  leaped  out 
from  the  willows  and  across  the  bridge  in  time  to  see 
three  or  four  idlers  running  out  of  the  roadhouse,  and 
Hartley  Daws,  hatless,  starting  from  the  door  of  his  little 
office  like  a  cuckoo  from  his  clock. 

All  the  lines  of  looking  and  running  converged  at  the 
Sink,  where  now  they  saw  arise  the  black  vomit  of  the 
earth  in  a  huge  column  that  broke  and  rained  backward 
on  the  green  sod.  They  saw  the  waggling,  broken  arm  of 
the  derrick,  whirled  about  like  a  twig  in  a  freshet,  and 
little  drenched  figures  running  aimlessly.  The  boys 
began  to  run,  too;  it  seemed  to  Kenneth  that  he  was  run 
ning  in  a  dream;  his  legs  moved  but  he  got  no  farther 
forward.  Men  came  running  up  behind  and  passed  them. 

' '  Strike !  Strike ! ' '  some  one  shouted. 

"It's  a  gusher!"  they  heard  Hartley  Daws  calling  over 
his  shoulder. 

The  grocery  wagon  went  by  at  a  gallop  with  Mr. 
Brent  standing  in  it  holding  on  to  the  back  of  the  seat. 


THE  FORD  107 

The  boys  clutched  at  the  tailboard,  felt  it  bumping 
cruelly  at  their  chests  and  then  ricocheted,  with  a  final 
jerking  halt,  into  the  ring  of  astonished  gazers  about  the 
precincts  of  the  well.  They  stood  off  from  the  fine  spray 
of  the  gusher,  the  fall  of  which  veered  a  little  and  finally 
descended  to  the  west  into  the  hollow  prepared  for  it.  Jim 
Hand  capered  about,  drunk  with  excitement.  He  was 
drenched  with  the  sudden  black  rain  and  blood  ran  down 
his  face  from  a  cut  in  his  forehead  made  by  a  falling  bar 
of  the  derrick,  though  he  seemed  not  to  notice  it;  from 
time  to  time  he  would  move  to  put  his  hand  to  his  head 
as  if  in  pain,  but  forgot  the  gesture  in  the  repetition  of 
an  obsessing  phrase. 

"Thousan'  bar'ls  a  day,  thousan'  bar'ls,"  -he 
clipped  his  words  like  a  man  far  gone  in  drink.  "Just 
look  at  her,  look  at  her!"  He  caught  sight  of  Brent  and 
surged  toward  him.  "What  d'  you  think  of  that,  Brent, 
what  d'  you  think  of  it?  Has  the  Homestead  Company 
got  oil  or  has  n't  it?  Betcha  there's  a  thousan'  bar'ls." 
He  waved  his  arms  about  as  challenging  all  comers  with 
the  statement. 

Brent  caught  him  by  the  shoulders  and  forced  his 
attention. 

"A  thousand  barrels  going  to  waste,  then,  you  booby." 

Hand  threw  him  off  with  a  foolish  laugh. 

"Tell  you  what,  boys,  there's  no  gusher  like  that  in 
these  oil  fields.  I  tell  you!  " 

"Take  him  away!"  Brent  ordered. 

Two  or  three  of  the  men  led  Hand  toward  his  house; 
they  saw  him  holding  his  head  at  last  as  if  he  had  just 
discovered  his  hurt.  Pop  Scudder  drifted  over  from  the 
truck  garden  where  he  had  been  at  the  moment  of  the 


108  THE  FORD 

strike.  He  was  looking  startled  and  yet  childishly  pleased 
out  of  the  ambush  of  his  silver  beard. 

He  chuckled  a  little  indulgently  at  Brent  as  he  sur 
veyed  the  spouting  rain.  " What '11  you  bet  she's  eighty 
feet  high?" 

Brent  could  have  struck  him;  instead  he  followed  the 
old  man's  look  across  the  space  in  which  Mrs.  Scudder 
moved  toward  them  with  the  youngest  Scudder  still 
hanging  at  her  skirts,  one  hand  stayed  to  her  flat  breasts. 
'She  looked  back  at  him,  white,  under  all  her  weather 
exposure,  with  the  facing  of  many  fearful  destinies. 

"Well,  mom,  it's  some  blow-out,  ain't  it?" 

"It  sure  air,  Pop." 

Something  passed  between  them,  with  the  homely 
words,  of  mutual  consolation,  the  profound,  extenuating 
look  of  the  long-mated.  They  had  n't  really  expected 
anything;  they  had  known  their  luck  would  get  the  better 
of  any  fortunate  circumstances  at  last;  they  had  met  too 
many  times  under  its  shadow  not  to  make  light  of  it. 
Steven  Brent  turned  from  them  suddenly,  sick  with 
comprehension.  He  began  to  walk  back  toward  Petrolia. 
Kenneth  ran  and  slipped  an  unobtrusive  hand  into  his 
father's;  he  understood  nothing  of  what  had  happened 
except  that  his  father  was  daunted  by  it.  They  could 
hear,  as  they  went,  Hartley  Daws,  to  whom  the  boring 
outfit  belonged,  trying  to  save  what  he  could  of  the  der 
rick;  the  roar  of  the  springing  well  cut  off  his  orders 
grotesquely.  It  seemed  a  long  walk  back  to  the  house, 
like  a  walk  in  a  dream,  with  disaster  clogged  about  their 
knees.  As  they  mounted  the  hillock  where  their  house 
stood,  father  and  son  could  see  crowds  of  people,  notified 
by  telephone,  getting  off  the  Summerfield  trolley. 


THE  FORD  109 

It  was  some  time  before  the  entertainment  of  the 
gusher  as  an  event,  and  an  event  proudly  and  exclusively 
theirs,  —  for  Addie  was  of  their  own  household  and  they 
scorned  the  pretensions  of  the  young  tribe  of  Scudders, 
—  was  dissipated  for  the  Brent  children  by  the  realiza 
tion  of  it  as  a  catastrophe.  It  gave  them  a  strange  sense 
of  secret  powers  to  see  it  swaying  like  a  torch  above  the 
Sink,  and  a  guilty  sense  of  connivance  when,  at  night,  as 
the  wind  turned  the  fall  in  their  direction,  its  steady, 
devouring  roar  made  the  thin  walls  of  the  bungalow  to 
tremble. 

The  gusher  decreased  in  height  and  volume  during 
three  days,  and  after  that  went  on  filling  the  shallow 
reservoir  and  keeping  pace  with  the  banks  that  Pop 
Scudder  and  Jim  Hand  piled  against  it.  On  Sunday  the 
banks  broke  and  the  viscid  flow  began  to  eat  up  the  till 
able  lands  of  the  Homestead  Development  Company. 
That  day  the  rainbow  hope  of  the  Homesteaders  was 
broken  and  dissolved  by  an  announcement  in  the  local 
paper  that  the  pipe  line,  which  had  been  building  to 
carry  the  surplus  product  of  Petrolia  to  the  Bay,  would 
be  in  operation  by  the  end  of  the  week,  and  that  the 
controlling  interest  had  been  leased  by  the  company  of 
which  the  Rickart  group  of  wells  was  the  representative. 

In  the  " Clarion"  the  announcement  was  almost  com 
pletely  overlaid  by  extended  reference  to  the  Rickart 
Company's  plans  for  subdividing  and  selling  out  in  small 
parcels  what  was  known  as  the  Summerfield  ranch  prop 
erty.  This  was  a  flat,  unplanted  acreage  lying  between 
the  town  and  the  foothills,  which  had  been  acquired  by 
the  Old  Man  after  the  way  north  had  been  closed  to  the 
cattle,  and  used  as  a  halfway  station  between  the  range 


110  THE  FORD 

and  market  for  the  long-horned,  milling  herds.  Since  el 
ano  malo,  however,  the  ranch  had  not  been  fully  re 
stocked,  and  with  the  improved  irrigation,  made  possible 
by  the  recent  release  of  capital  in  the  district,  the  break- 
ing-up  of  this  tract  into  vineyards  and  orchards,  marked, 
ihe  "Clarion"  assured  its  readers,  the  beginning  of  a  new 
era. 

Stirred  as  he  was  by  every  interest  of  the  soil,  the  sig 
nificance  of  the  pipe  line  announcement  might  have 
passed  over  Steven  Brent.  But  there  was  another  and 
smaller  sheet,  which  was,  or  affected  to  be,  free  from 
every  form  of  pocket  allegiance  to  the  Rickart  Interests, 
in  which  the  original  promise  of  the  pipe  line  to  be  a 
common  carrier,  and  the  significance  to  the  small  oil  pro 
ducer  of  its  preemption  by  the  Old  Man  was  made  as 
much  of  as  possible,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  nobody  knew 
just  how  the  thing  had  been  managed.  There  was  the 
usual  suggestion  of  legislative  connivance  and  private 
corruption,  the  usual  veiled  allusion  to  the  local  octopus, 
tempered  by  the  realization  that  a  free  press,  in  order  to 
remain  free,  must  not  render  itself  altogether  obnoxious. 
Passed  to  Brent  through  the  inflammable  mind  of  Jim 
Hand,  the  item  began  to  appear  sufficiently  alarming. 

The  announcement  had  appeared  in  the  Saturday 
issue.  Sunday  morning  there  had  been  an  informal  meet 
ing  of  the  Homestead  Development  Company  at  the 
Brents'  house,  in  which  the  querulous  impatience  of  the 
stockholders  at  Brent's  failure  to  get  "next"  to  the  Old 
Man's  plans  was  kept  in  check  only  by  the  realization 
that  Brent  was  still  their  one  chance,  through  his  con 
nection  with  Rickart,  of  keeping  "in"  with  the  newer  de 
velopment.  It  led  to  Brent's  walking  over  in  the  after- 


THE  FORD  111 

noon  to  discuss,  so  far  as  Cornelius  would  lend  himself  to 
discussion  of  his  employer's  affairs,  the  whole  situation 
with  the  Superintendent. 

"It  seems  to  me,  Cornelius,"  Mr.  Brent  allowed  him 
self  leave  to  say,  "that  you  need  n't  have  been  so  close 
with  me.  This  hits  our  interests  pretty  severely." 

"About  the  lease  you  mean?  I  didn't  know  myself  - 
at  least  not  in  time  to  do  you  any  good.    And  I  did 
advise  you  — " 

Brent  moved  impatiently. 

"What's  the  use  of  that  in  the  face  of  what  we've  got? 
You  knew  we  were  counting  on  the  pipe  line;  Rickart 
knew  it.  It  was  in  all  the  papers  that  it  was  to  be  a  com 
mon  carrier  -  The  men  were  standing  in  the  Burkes' 
front  yard,  which,  so  far  as  the  ordinary  boundaries  of  a 
front  yard  were  present  to  mark  it  off,  might  have  in 
cluded  the  whole  of  Petrolia.  They  could  see  from  where 
they  stood  the  Sunday  crowd  of  sight-seers  and  the 
black  geyser  shaking  above  the  Sink.  Brent  voiced  his 
impatience  with  a  touch  of  despair.  "Eight  hundred 
barrels  running  to  waste!  Good  Lord,  Cornelius,  what 
are  we  to  do!  " 

"You  are  kind  of  up  against  it,"  —  Burke's  sympathy 
was  genuine.  "You  might  get  the  Company  to  take  over 
your  product  —  but  you  know  how  the  Old  Man  is.  He 
does  n't  like  his  people  to  be  mixed  up  with  these  outside 
interests.  They're  apt  to  be  too  much  taken  up  with 
them.  And  then  it  looks  like  a  tip,  and  that  upsets  the 
market.  If  you  had  saved  your  capital  now,  and  put  it 
in  this  Summerfield  extension  —  that's  a  legitimate  in 
vestment." 

"Ah,"  said  Brent,  "if  you  had  just  given  me  the  tip  - 


112  THE  FORD 

I  suppose,"  —  he  turned  the  question  hopefully,  — 
"  there  would  n't  be  anything  doing  now,  in  the  way  of  a 
situation?  I'm  no  good  at  this  oil  business,  Cornelius, 
and  that's  a  fact;  I'm  sick  to  get  back  to  the  land." 

"Well,  the  Old  Man  was  mentioning  something  about 
me  having  charge  of  the  office,"  —  Burke  almost  apolo 
gized;  "but  to  tell  you  the  truth,  Steven,  being  tied  up 
with  this  Hand  outfit  has  n't  helped  you  any  with  the 
Old  Man  .  .  .  they're  a  bunch  of  pikers.  ..." 

"So  long  as  I  am  tied  up  with  them,"  Brent  took  him 
up  shortly,  "I'll  see  the  thing  through  with  them." 

Kenneth,  who,  with  a  disquieting  sense  of  his  father 
being  at  odds  with  circumstance,  had  been  hanging 
loosely  on  his  arm,  felt  the  squaring  of  Brent's  shoulders. 

In  spite  of  Brent's  employment  by  the  Bickart  Com 
pany  which  had  looked  so  hopeful  a  peg  to  hang  fortune 
upon,  the  development  of  the  next  few  days  left  the  fam 
ily  more  and  more  sickeningly  aware  how  completely 
they  had  been  deflected  from  the  main  line  of  pros 
perity.  They  were  not  "in  "at  all;  they  had  never  been 


"in." 


It  drove  the  children  more  and  more  to  the  open;  in 
the  little  thin-walled  house  they  were  never  free  from  the 
sense  of  their  mother's  impotent  chaffing,  and,  when 
ever  they  saw  the  black  torch  of  the  gusher  waving  above 
the  Sink  as  though  it  were  shaken  by  the  hand  of  disaster, 
from  an  uneasy  consciousness  of  guilt.  It  was  as  though 
in  their  fumbling  they  had  somehow  turned  the  forbidden 
key,  pressed  upon  the  prohibited  button.  Always  there 
was  their  mother's  importunate  — 

"But  isn't  there  anything  you  can  do,  Steven?  I 
should  think  you  could  think  of  something  to  do!" 


THE  FORD  113 

" There's  only  the  pipe  line  ...  the  courts  would  bear 
us  out  in  its  being  a  common  carrier,  I  think,  but  we 
are  n't  in  a  position  to  carry  it  up  to  them." 

"  But  how  did  Rickart  get  it?  Get  it  away  from  him  — 
Oh  —  if  you  would  do  —  anything  !  Won't  he  buy  the  oil 
from  you?  It's  perfectly  good  oil,  is  n't  it?  - 

Brent  looked  at  her  commiseratingly. 

" What's  the  use  of  offering  to  sell  a  man  what  he 
knows  you'll  be  glad  to  give  him  if  he  waits  a  bit." 
That  arrested  her. 

" Give  it  to  him!" 

"When  suits  begin  for  damages  —  we're  flooding  the 
Wilts  property  —  unless  we  can  stop  the  flow."  He 
threw  out  his  hands  with  a  hopeless  gesture.  "Do  you 
think  of  anything  to  do,  Molly?" 

"If  I  did,"  she  told  him  shortly,  "I  should  do  it  my 
self.  I  should  n't  leave  it  to  you!" 

It  did  not,  however,  occur  to  Kenneth  that  she  had 
found  something,  when  he  discovered  her  on  Wednesday 
waiting  for  him  at  the  close  of  school.  She  picked  him 
up  that  way  occasionally  when  it  was  a  question  of  new 
suits  or  shoes,  and  as  he  was  still  at  that  age  when  new 
shoes  would  have  been  in  order  on  almost  any  occasion, 
he  supposed  that  might  be  what  was  in  the  wind.  Espe 
cially  as  Anne  was  let  go  on  directly  home  with  Virginia. 
He  was  very  pleased  to  go  about  with  his  mother  on  any 
account.  There  was  no  denying,  as  they  went  along  the 
crowded  street,  the  quality  of  her  success.  She  had  such 
an  air  of  making  her  passage  of  the  public  thoroughfares 
a  thing  done  for  its  own  sake,  and  justified,  that  it 
brought  out  in  Kenneth  a  manner  before  which  even  the 
Burke  boys,  who  usually  contrived  completely  to  disown 


114  THE  FORD 

any  female  of  their  families  with  whom  they  might  be 
caught  walking,  were  abashed.  He  held  his  shoulders 
straighter  and  preceded  her  at  the  crossings  quite  of  his 
own  accord. 

They  did  not,  however,  on  this  occasion  turn  in  at  the 
shoe  store,  but  kept  on  to  the  disused  and  partly  recon 
structed  dwelling  which,  until  the  two-story  brick  block, 
to  which  the  local  paper  had  devoted  a  quarter  of  a 
column,  could  be  built,  did  duty  as  office  for  the  Rickart 
Interests. 

It  stood  quite  on  the  other  side  of  the  Main  Street,  a 
little  back  from  the  sidewalk,  in  one  of  those  grassless, 
shrubby  yards  which  characterized  the  pre-bungalow 
period  of  Summerfield  architecture.  As  they  hesitated  a 
moment  in  the  small  square  entrance,  they  had  a  general 
impression  of  trousered  legs  moving  to  dispose  themselves 
more  decorously  on  the  advent  of  so  fine  a  figure  of  a 
woman.  In  the  interval  before  any  one  came  forward  to 
inquire  her  business,  Mrs.  Brent  had  time  to  get  hold  of 
Kenneth's  hand  and  to  lose  a  little  of  that  bright  security 
to  which  her  shape,  the  hats  she  wore,  and  the  admirable 
line  of  her  skirts  lent  such  sanction.  The  strength  with 
which  she  clasped  her  son's  small,  perspiring  hand  sug 
gested  the  sudden  failure  of  her  high  determination,  per 
sisted  in  all  the  years  at  Palomitas,  to  treat  the  Old  Man 
as  a  neighbor,  and  a  neighbor  with  no  claim  to  any  other 
status.  After  all,  who  were  the  Rickarts?  It  was  with  a 
drowning  clutch  on  her  old  resolution  that  they  were 
ushered  into  his  private  office. 

" Frank's  somewhere  about,"  Frank's  father  let  fall  to 
Kenneth  as  soon  as  they  had  finished  with  the  hand 
shaking;  "he  was  here  a  minute  ago."  He  was  looking  at 


THE  FORD  115 

the  boy  as  he  spoke  and  Kenneth  looked  at  him  with  that 
half  flutter  of  a  smile  between  them  by  which  these  two, 
when  they  met,  recognized,  without  its  occurring  to 
either  of  them  to  admit  it,  that  they  liked  one  another. 
Kenneth  supposed  that  the  words  were  a  permission  to 
take  himself  out  of  the  way,  but  a  look  from  his  mother 
detained  him.  The  Old  Man  caught  her  halfway  in  it. 

"And  what  can  I  do  for  you,  Mrs.  Brent?"  was  his 
curt  way  of  recognizing  the  suggestion  of  formality  in  her 
visit. 

"Ah,  what  can  you?  That's  what  I  came  about." 

"In  relation  to  —  what?"  The  half  gesture  he  made 
to  resume  the  dry  smoke,  left  off  in  deference  to  the  pres 
ence  of  a  lady,  seemed  indefinably  a  movement  to  guard. 

"The  gusher,  you  know,"  -  she  was  determined  to  be 
bright  with  him,  —  "it's  flooding  us  off  the  map,  —  un 
less  you  take  a  hand  at  it."  The  absence  of  emphasis 
on  the  "you"  had  a  world  of  feminine  wile  in  it;  it  took 
so  many  things  for  granted.  Too  many. 

Rickart's  response  to  it  was  distinctly  colder. 

"Young  Daws  seems  to  be  doing  all  that  can  be  done. 
I  sent  him  over  four  of  my  scrapers  to-day." 

"To  cut  off  the  flow  altogether  —  but  that  cuts  us  off 
just  as  completely." 

Her  voice  made  of  the  gusher  a  smaller  matter  than 
Kenneth  had  ever  imagined  could  be  made  of  it,  almost 
an  amusing  matter.  He  was  on  the  point  of  speaking  up, 
of  protesting  that  it  was  n't  a  matter  you  could  just  take 
up  between  your  thumb  and  finger,  but  the  Old  Man 
spoke  first. 

"It's  a  risk  we  all  run  in  a  country  where  gushers  are 
frequent.  One  has  to  be  prepared." 


116  THE  FORD 

"We  thought  we  were  —  the  pipe  line,  you  know." 
She  couldn't  quite  keep  it  up;  her  voice  trembled;  the 
smile  with  which  she  finished  was  a  little  awry.  "We 
could  n't  imagine  you  were  going  to  swoop  down  on  it 
like  that." 

Rickart  restored  his  unlighted  cigar  to  the  corner  of  his 
mouth  and  revolved  perplexedly.  He  leaned  both  his 
hands  on  the  rim  of  the  desk  before  him  and  looked  across 
it  at  Kenneth.  " Frank's  somewheres  around  the  back 
yard/'  he  explained;  "you  could  look  for  him." 

Mrs.  Brent  forestalled  him  again. 

"We're  going  soon."  One  could  see  that  she  meant  to 
be  brief  and  businesslike  with  him. 

Rickart  surrendered  to  the  situation. 
[\  "Now,  look  here  Mrs.  Brent,  I  know  what  your  hus 
band  thinks  about  that  pipe  line,  and  I  want  to  tell  you 
that  he's  dead  wrong." 

"Then  you  will  take  over  their  product.  ..."  She  slid 
the  phrase  off  with  a  rising  inflection. 

Rickart  paid  the  tribute  of  a  flickering  glance  to  the 
cleverness  with  which  she  almost  did  the  trick. 

"The  terms  on  which  we 've  leased  the  line  won't  admit 
of  our  carrying  anything  but  our  own  output,"  he  noti 
fied  her.  "I  knew  the  small  owners  would  kick  —  it 
pinches  them,  and  bad,  too.  But  I  want  to  say,  Mrs. 
Brent,  what  I  have  n't  said  to  anybody  here  except  Burke, 
that  it  never  was  a  question  of  the  small  owners  and  my 
self  at  all.  It  was  a  question  between  me  and  Standard 
Oil.  If  I  had  n't  got  ahead  of  them,  they  'd  have  got  ahead 
of  me,  and  then  where  would  you  be  in  any  case?" 

The  troubled  end  of  his  cigar  traveled  its  half-circuit 
of  perplexity  in  the  corner  of  his  mouth;  he  bore  hard 


THE  FORD  117 

with  his  spread  fingers  on  the  rim  of  the  desk  in  his  effort 
to  make  himself  completely  understood.  "I'm  sorry  for 
your  husband,  Mrs.  Brent.  He 's  a  man  I  have  the  greatest 
possible  respect  for.  But  this  thing  is  a  game.  You've  got 
to  play  it  with  the  cards  that  are  on  the  table.  I  did  n't 
know  to  what  extent  Brent  had  mixed  himself  up  with 
those  pikers,  but  it  could  n't  have  made  any  difference  if 
I  had.  I  know  a  lot  of  yahoos  like  Jim  Hand  think  us 
capitalists  are  just  lying  in  wait  for  'em  at  the  cross 
roads  to  gobble  'em,  but  the  fact  is  we're  looking  out  to 
save  our  own  skins  the  same  as  they  are,  only  we  look 
out  better.  It's  not  so  easy  as  you  think.  I  had  to  have 
outside  money  on  this  deal."  He  would  not  look  at  her 
as  he  destroyed  her  hopes,  pressing  them  down  one  by 
one  with  a  spatulate  finger  on  the  desk  before  him. 
"Brent  ought  n't  to  have  gone  in  with  that  outfit,"  he 
concluded,  "it's  not  his  game." 

"I  don't  know  why  you  should  think  that  of  my  hus 
band."  She  was  choking. 

"Have  n't  I  just  said  I've  the  greatest  possible  respect 
for  him?  .  .  .  But  he's  a  born  rancher.  It's  a  wonder 
what  he  accomplished  there  at  Palomitas,  beginning 
with  nothing  at  all.  Why  did  you  let  him  quit?" 

She  blenched  at  that.    "The  place  was  mortgaged  - 

"I  know,  I  know  -  '  He  looked  at  her  now  and  was 
relieved  to  see  that  she  was  n't  going  to  cry.  He  could  n't 
for  the  life  of  him  understand  why  women  did  these 
things.  "I  was  pretty  hard  hit  myself,  but  if  I  'd  known— 
Any  sort  of  a  ranching  proposition  now,  I'd  back  Brent 
against  any  man.  He  had  that  ranch  where  it  would  have 
paid  him  big  money  in  a  few  years.  But  he  can't  buck 
this  game,  Mrs.  Brent.  If  you'd  get  him  back  to  Palo- 


118  THE  FORD 

mitas — "  He  broke  off  as  if  remembering  something. 
"I  guess  that's  not  possible  —  now."  Any  emphasis 
there  might  have  been  on  the  item  of  time  missed  her 
benumbed  faculties. 

1 1  Then  there 's  nothing  — ? ' '  She  rose. 

He  rose  with  her. 

"  Unless  Daws  gets  her  cut  off  —  they  could  lay  low 
a  while.  Now  that  you  know  there's  oil  there  — " 

She  gave  an  unmirthful  laugh. 

"Oh,  there's  oil  there,  there's  oil!"  She  got  out  some 
how  holding  to  Kenneth's  hand.  All  the  way  home  on  the 
trolley  she  held  it  with  convulsive  clasps  and  shudders; 
something  struggled  up  in  her  shaking  the  fine  bosom,  and 
was  bitten  back. 

Kenneth  felt  for  the  note  of  sympathy.. 

"That  old  Rickart,  I  just  hate  him." 

"Hush,"  she  bade  him;  "somebody '11  hear  you." 

They  came  down  the  bluff  stumblingly;  the  thing  that 
struggled  in  her  had  her  by  the  throat.  She  turned  aside 
at  the  bridge  into  the  willows  until  they  came  to  the  place 
from  which  the  boys  had  heard  the  first  portentous  roar 
of  the  gusher.  For  a  moment  Kenneth  thought  that  she 
had  it  in  for  him  somehow  on  account  of  the  cigarettes; 
the  half-burned  stumps  lay  where  they  had  dropped 
them;  but  he  saw  that  she  was  crying;  she  leaned  against 
the  willow  trunk  and  shook  with  sobbing. 

Kenneth  did  not  know  what  to  do;  his  breast  swelled 
against  Frank's  father;  he  thought  that  he  would  take  it 
out  of  Frank  one  of  these  days.  Suddenly  he  found  that  he 
was  crying  too.  He  slipped  his  hand  under  his  mother's 
arm  and  leaned  against  her.  She  shook  him  off  impa 
tiently. 


THE  FORD  119 

"  What  have  you  got  to  cry  for  ?"  But  the  affectionate 
gesture  had  touched  the  chord  of  self-commiseration ;  she 
struck  the  willow  with  her  tender  fist.  "  I  can't  bear  it; 
I  can't!  To  think  that  we've  always  got  to  be  like  this, 
always  poor  —  and  put  upon.  Never  to  have  anything! 
Never  to  be  anybody!  It's  too  stupid!"  The  old  in 
tolerable  cry  broke  from  her.  "I'll  not  bear  it!"  she 
reiterated;  "nobody  could  be  expected  to  bear  it!" 

By  degrees  her  anguish  worked  away;  she  moved  up 
and  down  muttering  to  herself.  By  and  by  she  took  a 
powder  puff  from  her  pocket  and  dusted  her  nose.  She 
retied  her  veil.  Kenneth  understood  that  they  were  to 
set  out  for  the  house;  he  was  terrified  and  ashamed  as  the 
young  often  are  at  any  emotion  in  their  elders.  On  the 
bridge  his  mother  turned  and  looked  at  him  for  a  mo 
ment.  He  knew  as  well  as  anything  that  she  had  it  in 
mind  to  warn  him  not  to  mention  the  episode  of  the  after 
noon  to  his  father,  and  though  she  did  not  finally,  he 
also  knew,  better  than  anything,  that  she  knew  he  would 
not.  He  knew  it  was  unmentionable. 

As  they  paused  before  the  house  for  a  moment  their 
attention  was  arrested  by  the  cessation  of  the  rushing 
roar  of  the  gusher,  always  faintly  audible  from  the 
veranda  as  from  the  lip  of  a  shell.  Glancing  away  toward 
the  Sink  they  could  see  the  black  column  drop,  bubble, 
and  go  out  under  the  heap  of  sand  which  Hartley  Daws's 
men  had  managed  to  draw  about  it  and  topple  over  the 
fountain's  mouth.  A  moment  it  remained  so,  cut  off  as 
by  the  turning  of  a  tap,  for  as  long  as  they  held  a  sus 
pended  breath  to  watch  it.  Then,  with  a  swift,  tearing 
sound,  it  tossed  up  gobbets  of  sand  as  a  cork  is  tossed 
from  champagne;  the  column  shot  up  again  and  the  fig- 


120  THE  FORD 

ures  of  the  men  were  veiled  in  the  relentless,  viscid  rain. 
Years  afterward  it  seemed  to  Kenneth  in  retrospect  that 
the  roar  of  the  released  gusher  was  but  the  signal  to 
disaster  which  rushed  in  upon  his  youth  from  every 
side. 


VIII 

WITH  the  full  disclosure  of  the  Old  Man's  plans  for  par 
celing  out  the  Summerfield  ranch  came  other  news  and 
not  less  disconcerting.  It  was  brought  direct  from  Agua 
Caliente  by  the  Ballards,  Frank's  sole  kin  on  the  mother's 
side. 

M^.  Ballard  was  a  woman  who  had  but  one  object  in 
life,  or  at  least  but  one  which  she  allowed  herself  to  speak 
of  as  an  object,  and  that  was  to  be  a  mother  to  poor  dear 
Fanny's  boy,  who  could  n't  bear  her. 

She  was  quite  the  mirror  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of 
that  form  which  is  accomplished  in  the  middle  forties  by 
pushing  all  the  superfluous  flesh  close  up  under  the  bust 
and  keeping  it  there  by  means  of  a  " straight  front"  and 
a  heroic  resolution. 

About  Ballard  there  was  a  paucity  of  ideas  and  a 
plentitude  of  coatskirt  and  whisker  which  seemed  to 
bear  her  out  in  the  way  she  continually  lined  him  up  and 
toned  him  down  to  his  proper  attitudes  as  husband  to  a 
woman  whose  sister  had  married  T.  Rickart.  In  seventeen 
years  she  had  acquired  a  way  of  looking  at  him  which  said 
as  plainly  as  possible  that  she  would  n't  have  thought  of 
bestowing  herself  on  him  if  she  had  had  any  idea  that 
poor  dear  Fanny  was  going  to  make  such  a  match  of  it. 
Occasionally,  the  Ballards  had  visited  at  Agua  Caliente, 
where  there  had  grown  up  an  intimacy  between  Mrs. 
Brent  and  Frank's  aunt,  based  on  a  common  sense  of 
their  superiority  to  Mrs.  Burke.  Always  it  was  at  the 
back  of  Mrs.  Ballard's  mind  that  Burke's  place  should 


THE  FORD 

belong  to  her  husband,  not  because  of  any  fitness  for  it, 
but  because  of  what  she  as  a  sensitive  woman  —  so  sen 
sitive,  my  dear,  it  has  positively  been  the  ruin  of  me  — 
could  n't  help  feeling  for  her  sister's  son.  Now  that  the 
turn  of  the  wheel  had  brought  them  to  Summerfield,  still 
in  a  position  of  subordination  to  Burke,  it  gave  a  fillip 
to  that  intimacy  to  find  the  Brents  in  almost  an  iden 
tical  case. 

So  it  was  to  the  Brents  they  came  with  the  news,  picked 
up  at  Agua  Caliente,  that  Jevens  had  discovered  oil  at 
Palomitas.  Over  on  Mariposa.  Nobody  knew  whether 
or  not  it  was  a  profitable  flow,  but  it  was  oil.  Men  at 
Agua  Caliente  had  seen  it. 

Something  shriveled  in  Mrs.  Brent  as  at  a  hot  blast. 
She  cried  out  against  it. 

"It's  not  true  .  .  .I'll  not  believe  it!"  In  the  midst 
of  protest  memory  awoke;  she  was  taken  with  one  of 
those  riving  flashes  of  insight  in  which  situations  seemed 
under  her  hand  to  become  hopeless  by  their  clearness. 
"He  knew  it,"  she  broke  forth.  "Rickart  knew  it  all  the 
time.  He  knew  it  while  we  were  there.  All  the  time  we 
were  struggling  so  ...  and  with  all  I  did  for  Frank.  He 
knew  there  was  oil  and  he  never  told  us!" 

"But  you  can't  be  sure,"  her  husband  warned  her. 
"Why  should  he  keep  a  thing  like  that  from  us?" 

"Oh,  don't  ask  me  why.  It  wasn't  on  his  land. 
Don't  talk  about  it." 

The  Brents  had  indeed  stopped  talking  oil.  They  had 
had  enough  of  it.  Nevertheless,  Mrs.  Brent  upbraided 
.Addie  as  the  nearest  representative  of  the  Powers  that 
had  played  such  a  trick  on  them. 

Addie  flushed  in  their  defense. 


THE  FORD  123 

"Well,  now,  Miss'  Brent,  you  can't  expect  They're 
going  to  be  remembering  always  about  human  foolishness 
and  taking  account  of  it.  They  got  to  let  men  do  some 
things  for  theirselves,  ain't  They?  They  done  the  best 
They  could  for  Mr.  Brent  when  They  gave  him  the  land 
and  the  liking  for  it;  he  had  n't  ought  to  have  let  go  of 
it.  They  can't  be  lottin'  all  the  time  on  human  foolishness 
and  meanness,  like  Ole  Man  Rickart's  and  my  Pop's. 
They  got  other  things  to  think  about,  ain't  They?" 

"Oh,"  Mrs.  Brent  flung  back  at  her,  "I  suppose  even 
God  could  n't  help  a  fool." 

Words  like  these  flew  wide  over  the  children's  heads 
and  found  their  mark. 

The  story  of  Jevens  and  his  Palomitas  find  grew,  tak 
ing  form  and  color  from  men's  minds.  It  was  said  that 
Jevens  had  known  all  the  time  there  was  oil  there;  it 
fairly  oozed  out  of  the  ground.  Jevens  had  not  known; 
Brent  had  thrown  the  place  at  him  and  he  had  taken  it 
for  charity.  He  had  only  a  trace  of  oil  and  was  trying  to 
create  a  boom  to  sell  his  property.  He  had  found  abun 
dance  of  oil  and  was  trying  to  keep  it  quiet  until  he  could 
make  a  deal  with  the  railroad  which  had  been  surveyed 
through  Tierra  Longa  these  twenty  years.  Jevens  had 
private  advices  that  the  railroad  would  go  through  at 
once  if  he  could  find  oil.  He  had  had  the  whole  place 
prospected  by  Hartley  Daws,  who  had  reported  that 
there  was  no  oil.  Then  Jevens  had  heard  of  a  meeting 
between  Daws  and  the  Old  Man  at  Romero's.  Naturally 
the  Old  Man  did  n't  want  oil  discovered  at  Palomitas 
until  he  had  ripped  the  guts  out  of  Petrolia.  He  had  made 
it  worth  while  for  Daws  to  report  unfavorably;  he  was  in 
deep  in  the  pipe  line;  it  was  up  to  him  to  keep  the  price 


124  THE  FORD 

going.  So  opinion  chopped  back  and  forth  like  a  wave  in 
the  wind. 

Much  of  all  this  went  over  the  children's  heads.  Trou 
ble  gathered  about  the  Homesteader's  Development 
Company,  but  was  overshadowed  in  their  minds  by  the 
immediate  and  pressing  concern  of  Examinations.  April 
lengthened  into  the  rich  warmth  of  May,  and  then  there 
was  Vacation;  things  transpiring  in  and  about  Summer- 
field  made  it  eventful.  The  Rickart  Land  and  Develop 
ment  Company  began  upon  its  brick  block.  It  was  un 
derstood  that  the  Burkes  were  to  move  into  town  when  it 
was  completed,  and  Cornelius  was  to  have  charge  of  the 
office.  The  process  of  letting  him  down  was  being  accom 
plished  with  due  consideration.  The  Ballards  moved  to 
Summerfield.  Ballard  was  to  keep  the  books  of  the  new 
concern  with  such  disguises  of  his  title  and  relation  to  the 
firm  as  was  demanded  by  the  interest  which  Mrs.  Ballard 
kept  alive  in  poor  dear  Fanny's  offspring.  First  and  last 
the  Brents  heard  a  great  deal  of  the  relationship,  but  it 
was  plain  that  Ballard  himself  would  have  been  much 
happier  merely  to  have  been  an  employee  of  Rickart's, 
peculating  in  stamps  and  stationery  perquisites,  servile 
to  his  face  and  cheaply  disrespectful  behind  his  back. 
Frank  lived  with  his  aunt  that  summer,  in  pursuance  of 
his  father's  plan  to  keep  him  as  much  as  possible  out  of 
the  city.  In  July,  Mrs.  Ballard  took  them  all,  the  two 
Brents  and  Virginia,  over  to  Agua  Caliente  for  an  outing. 

Almost  the  first  of  their  rides  was  to  see  the  oil  well  at 
Palomitas.  It  lay  on  the  Ridge  between  the  house  and 
the  Ford  of  Mariposa;  a  little  trickle  of  the  familiar  black 
fluid  oozed  from  it  and  wasted  away  into  the  creek.  Near 
by,  a  second  boring  in  which  the  drill  had  been  broken 


THE  FORD  125 

and  left,  marked  the  limit  of  Jevens's  hopes,  or  more 
probably  of  his  capital.  It  had  been  decided  that  the 
railroad  was  not  to  come  through  Tierra  Longa  after  all. 
In  silence  the  children  turned  and  rode  on  to  the  Ford. 
It  looked  smaller  than  they  remembered  it;  the  stones 
along  its  borders  were  blackened  here  and  there  with  the 
sticky  overflow  of  the  well,  thin  rainbow  films  of  oil 
floated  on  the  surface  of  the  water  as  it  went  hurrying 
by.  Nevertheless,  they  dismounted  and  sat  on  the  shelv 
ing  bank  with  their  horses  picketed  behind  them. 

"That  nasty  oil,  it's  over  everything!"  Anne  broke 
out.  " I  wish  we'd  never  heard  of  it! " 

"It  was  just  here  we  were,  when  we  saw  them  coming 
out  of  the  Draw  that  day."  Virginia  luxuriated  in  remi 
niscences.  "'Nacio's  diablo  negro!  That's  what  he  was, 
prospecting  for  oil  right  on  your  own  land." 

They  looked  up  toward  the  Draw  with  a  touch  of  the 
old,  half -fearful  anticipation.  Somewhere  in  its  secret 
recesses  the  presence  of  death  was  announced  by  the 
wheeling  of  the  buzzards  low  and  steadily.  The  field 
nearest  them  was  possessed  by  a  ramping  black  stallion; 
half  a  dozen  mares  with  their  colts  of  that  year  ran  in  the 
potrero.  There  was  nothing  particularly  amiss  with  the 
scene  and  yet  over  it  and  over  all  Tierra  Longa  was  the 
indefinable  impress  of  neglect.  Prosperity  had  gone  by 
them. 

" — Just  a  black  devil — "  Virginia  was  dramatizing 
the  idea  when  Frank  interrupted  her.  He  shied  a  stone 
into  the  dry  gully  leading  down  from  the  ranch  house. 

"Come  out  of  that!"  he  demanded.  They  perceived  a 
figure  dodging  there.  "Oh-ee!  'Nacio!"  they  raised  in 
concert. 


126  THE  FORD 

Ignacio  Stanislauo  came  out  of  the  dry  Wash  and  re 
mained  at  his  accustomed  distance,  at  once  both  bold 
and  shy.  By  almost  the  buzzard's  instinctive  sense  he 
had  seen  them  from  the  house  and  tracked  them  here. 
He  had  matured  more  than  any  of  them  in  two  years; 
he  was  slim  and  taller;  he  had  the  grace  of  the  Spaniard, 
but  you  saw  at  once  that  his  mother  must  have  been  an 
Indian.  On  the  whole  they  were  glad  to  see  one  another. 
'Nacio  was  carrying  a  handful  of  mariposa  lilies,  such  as 
grew  airily  at  the  tips  of  tall,  wiry  stems  all  over  the  mesa 
at  this  season.  He  slapped  them  gently  against  his  leg  as 
he  answered  them  categorically  on  behalf  of  Manuela, 
Carmelita,  Francisco,  and  Pedro  Demetrio. 

"  You '11  break  them,"  Virginia  protested;  "give  them 
to  me  if  that's  all  you  can  do  with  them." 

A  certain  reticence  as  of  the  Indian  came  over  the  boy; 
he  sidled  past  her  with  a  quick,  unobtrusive  movement 
and  thrust  the  lilies  into  Anne's  lap. 

"They  very  pretty  flor;  maybe  you  like." 

Frank  jeered  a  little.  "Did  you  ever  get  left,  Virginia ! " 

"Oh,  well,"  Virginia  flashed  .  .  .  "He  knows  what's 
good  for  him!" 

This  cryptic  remark  was  rendered  perfectly  intelligible 
by  the  swift,  wordless  communication  of  youth.  It  meant 
that  as  Ignacio's  father  was  working  for  Frank's  father, 
it  was  inevitable  that  it  would  be  to  Ignacio's  interest  to 
please  Frank,  and  that  Frank  would  rather  Anne  had  the 
flowers.  This  was  perfectly  plain  to  Kenneth,  though  he 
could  not  altogether  account  for  it.  Most  boys  gave 
things  to  Virginia;  she  was,  for  one  thing,  infinitely  pret 
tier.  He  was  surprised  to  see  that  both  Frank  and  his 
sister  reddened;  Ignacio  Stanislauo  carried  it  off  better. 


THE  FORD  127 

"I  got  to  go  back,"  he  announced  grandly.  "I'm  work 
ing  for  Jevens." 

He  was  also  more  of  a  man  than  either  of  his  former 
tormentors.  He  reached  back  in  the  pocket  of  the  blue 
denims  buckled  about  his  slim  waist,  and  drew  out  the 
makings  of  a  cigarette.  They  watched  him  in  fascinated 
silence  as  he  caught  the  edge  of  his  tobacco  sack  in  his 
teeth  and  drew  out  the  loop  with  a  practiced  finger. 
Kenneth  was  aching  to  have  Frank  restore  the  balance 
of  accomplishment  with  a  show  of  his  silver  case;  when 
the  snub  came,  however,  it  was  even  more  effective  than 
he  had  expected.  Ignacio  rolled  his  cigarette,  standing 
with  his  feet  apart  in  a  manly  attitude.  They  noticed 
that  his  legs  were  bowed  already  by  the  saddle. 

"  Smoke,  Rickart?"  His  grown-up  manner  could  not 
have  been  improved  upon. 

Frank  was  majestical.  "I  don't  smoke  in  the  presence 
of  ladies." 

A  certain  bridling  on  the  part  of  the  ladies  present 
advised  him  that  he  had  struck  the  right  note.  Kenneth 
felt  that  he  would  never  have  thought  of  anything  so 
brilliant  himself;  such  nuances  were,  however,  lost  on 
Ignacio  Stanislauo. 

"So  long!"  he  saluted  them;  as  he  turned  back  up  the 
gully,  he  paused  just  long  enough  deliberately  to  set  a 
match  to  his  cigarette. 

"My  goodness,  Anne,"  Virginia  giggled,  "to  think  of 
'Nacio  being  sweet  on  you." 

"I  don't  think  it's  that,"  Anne  protested;  "it's  just 
that  this  was  my  home  .  .  .  and  the  first  time  I ' ve  been 
back  ..."  She  had  always  stood  up  for  the  little  Rom 
eros  more  than  any  of  them. 


128  THE  FORD 

"  Anyway,  what  if  he  was;  you  used  to  be  sweet  enough 
on  old  Ken."  Frank  was  always  swift  to  the  rescue. 
"  Remember  how  I  caught  you  kissing  him,  last  time 
we  were  here." 

"He  was  telling  me  good-bye;  we  were  nothing  but 
children."  Virginia  felt  herself  injured. 

"Bet  you  can't  get  him  to  do  it  again.  Go  on,  Ken. 
Go  to  it,"  Frank  scoffed.  " What  you  afraid  of?" 

"I  ain't  afraid  of  anything,"  Kenneth  averred  hotly; 
"I  just  don't  want  to." 

"Frank  Rickart,  you're  the  meanest  ..."  Virginia 
executed  one  of  those  swift  changes  from  indignation  to 
cool  philosophy  under  which  Frank  winced.  "I  guess 
you  come  by  it  honestly.  When  I  think  of  the  kind  of 
thing  your  father  does  —  that  pipe  line,  and  everything 
..."  Virginia  always  cut  right  and  left  regardless  of  her 
own  position. 

"Well,  I  guess  he  did  n't  do  anything  to  your  father." 
Frank  was  driven  to  defend  himself. 

"Well,  I  guess  it  does  n't  matter  who  a  person  does  a 
mean  thing  to.  Persons  ought  to  be  fair  just  for  fairness." 
Virginia's  eyes  were  shining,  the  warm  wind  blew  little 
tendrils  of  hair  about  her  forehead. 

"I  guess  my  father  can  take  care  of  himself,"  Kenneth 
advised  her.  Some  floating  straws  of  things  heard  at 
home  in  long,  troubled  sessions  of  the  Homestead  Devel 
opment  Company  came  uppermost  in  his  mind  and  he 
seized  upon  them.  "I  guess  Burt  and  Estes  money  is  as 
good  as  anybody's.  First  thing  the  Rickart  Company 
knows — " 

"First  thing  you  know  we'll  be  late  to  lunch." 

Anne's  announcement  brought  them  all  to  their  feet. 


THE  FORD  129 

As  they  set  out  by  the  upper  road  for  Agua  Caliente,  she 
pulled  out  a  moment  and  passed  Kenneth  on  the  off  side. 
"  You  shut  up!"  she  warned;  " talking  about  things  you 
don't  know  anything  about." 

As  his  sister  rode  on,  Virginia  fell  in  beside  him.  She 
lagged  her  horse  until  the  other  two  were  more  than 
earshot  ahead  of  her. 

"What  makes  you  such  a  stupid,  Ken,  letting  Frank 
put  a  scare  on  you?  What's  kissing  anyway?" 

"I  was  n't  scared." 

"Well,"  —  impatiently,  —  " that  isn't  the  way  to 
make  folks  think  so,  just  saying  you  ain't." 

"I  did  n't  think  you'd  like  it."  Kenneth  was  conscious 
of  having  fallen  into  her  bad  graces  .  .  .  "I'll  kiss  you 
now,  Virginia,  if  you  want  me  to." 

"Oh,  my  goodness,  Kenneth  Brent,  did  you  think  I'd 
let  you!"  She  struck  her  horse  viciously  and  gave  him 
her  flying  dust. 

In  spite  of  such  perplexing  incidents  they  had  a  glori 
ous  week,  and  agreed  solemnly,  with  young  confidence 
in  controlling  destiny,  that  they  would  come  there  every 
summer  for  just  such  another  so  long  as  they  lived.  "No 
matter  where  we  are  or  what  we  are  doing,  we'll  just  lay 
it  down,  half  a  world  away,"  Virginia  dramatized,  "and 
come  back  to  the  dear  old  land."  But  if  she  had  been 
able  to  foresee  that  never  again  would  the  four  of  them 
ride  together  at  Agua  Caliente,  nor  anywhere  in  quite 
the  same  relation  again,  she  would  have  got  just  as  much 
pleasure  out  of  it. 

The  first  thing  the  children  noticed  the  morning  that 
they  came  back  to  Petrolia,  was  a  solemn,  unfamiliar  still 
ness  as  of  a  death  in  the  family.  It  was  the  gusher  that 


130  THE  FORD 

had  died.  Without  warning  it  had  fallen  to  half  its 
height,  bubbled  there  for  a  day  and  a  half,  dropped  half 
again,  shot  up  hissing  far  into  the  air  with  such  force  that 
the  oil  divided  in  a  fine  spray,  stopped  short,  and  with  a 
final  burst  that  tore  the  earth  for  yards  about  the  throat 
of  the  well,  it  ceased  to  be.  Nothing  was  left  of  it  but 
the  shimmering,  stinking  pool  that  spread  far  over  the 
adjacent  land  and  fouled  the  ancient  bed  of  the  river. 

There  was  a  sense  of  loss  with  it  at  first,  and  then  relief. 
The  relief  was  merely  physical.  The  Wilts  property- 
owners  filed  suit  for  damages;  it  was  a  just  claim  that  the 
company  would  have  been  glad  to  compromise  had  there 
been  money  attainable.  And  there  was  no  money.  All 
that  the  rich  promise  of  the  future  still  brought  to  Pe- 
trolia  was  engaged  in  the  building  of  tanks  and  reservoirs. 
When  the  Rickart  Company  had  discharged  its  surplus, 
then  the  flow  would  begin  again,  to  and  from  the  mar 
kets  of  the  world,  oil  going  down  in  the  great  pipe  line  to 
the  Bay  and  money  coming  in  through  its  appointed 
conduits. 

And  in  the  mean  time  Wilts  might  get  a  judgment;  or 
the  oil  spread  all  over  the  surface  of  the  land  might 
catch  fire.  While  the  gusher  was  going,  it  warned  with 
its  terrible  menace  the  passers-by.  Men  carefully  ground 
out  their  cigar  butts  in  the  dust  of  the  road  before  they 
ventured  within  reach  of  its  inflammable  rain.  But  as  it 
sunk  into  the  earth  and  left  the  hillocks  bare,  they  grew 
careless.  A  spark,  the  clash  of  an  iron-shod  heel  on  flint, 
might  have  set  it  off.  Or  it  might  have  caught  even  from 
the  incandescent  wrath  of  Jim  Hand.  Day  by  day  anger 
flared  higher  in  him  as  he  went  about  muttering,  chew 
ing  the  cud  of  his  bitter  resentment. 


THE  FORD  131 

He  was  working  by  the  day  with  his  team  on  one  of  the 
great  reservoirs  in  the  hills;  he,  part  possessor  in  one  of 
the  richest  sections  of  Petrolia.  Land  —  acres  of  land 
with  oil  under  it !  Oh,  there  was  no  doubt  about  the  oil  - 
and  he  was  working  for  day's  wages.  It  was  plain  that 
the  Homestead  Company  would  have  to  make  terms 
with  the  devouring  beast. 

They  must  have  Capital.  There  were  two  notable  rep 
resentatives  of  Capital  in  Petrolia.  Rickart  and  the  com 
bination  known  as  Burt  and  Estes,  which  had  competed 
unsuccessfully  with  the  Old  Man  for  control  of  the  pipe 
line.  Both  of  them  would  presumably  be  interested  in 
keeping  other  large  interests  out  of  the  field;  it  was 
thought  the  ultimate  argument  with  either  would  be  the 
suggestion  of  an  appeal  to  the  other.  The  Homestead 
Development  Company  milled  it  over  sitting  around  the 
Brents'  dining-table,  evening  after  evening.  The  talk  of 
it  mixed  with  all  Kenneth's  reading;  it  was  sewn  into  all 
Anne's  clothes.  Their  minds  ran  in  a  little  track;  they 
plotted  and  were  wise  over  they  knew  not  what. 

The  Brents  must  have  known  at  last  what  they  had 
let  themselves  in  for;  the  deep  distrusts,  the  limited 
imagination  of  Pop  Scudder  and  Jim  Hand.  Brent  stood 
out  as  much  as  he  dared  for  an  appeal  to  Rickart.  He 
knew  a  little  of  the  Old  Man's  weakness.  If  they  put 
themselves  unreservedly  in  his  hands,  they  would  be 
shorn,  no  doubt,  but  they  would  get  something:  the  por 
tion  of  faithful  vassals.  If  they  went  to  Burt  and  Estes, 
they  would  get  the  enmity  of  Rickart  and  what  else  be 
sides?  Who  knew?  Burt  and  Estes  were  reported  to  be 
but  one  of  the  chameleon  forms  of  Standard  Oil.  With  all 
Steven  Brent  could  say,  his  wife  reproached  him  for  not 


132  THE  FORD 

saying  more.  " Impossible,"  he  told  her;  "Hand  has  al 
ready  thrown  it  up  to  me  that  I  'm  working  for  the  Old 
Man.  They  '11  think  I  'm  making  something  for  myself  on 
the  side." 

" The  common  thing!"  She  dismissed  him.  Of  late  she 
had  taken  a  new  note  toward  her  husband,  almost  of 
apology,  of  reparation.  It  offered  him  no  clue,  however, 
to  her  sudden  anxiety  to  enroll  their  interests  under 
Rickart's  banner.  They  settled  at  last  the  terms  of  a 
mortgage  which  they  might  offer  to  Burt  and  Estes  for 
money  enough  to  satisfy  Wilts  and  to  make  new  borings 
on  another  part  of  the  land,  this  time  with  adequate  pro 
vision  for  the  unexpected.  It  was  all  to  be  so  secret;  you 
never  knew  what  you  might  be  up  against  if  these  things 
got  about.  It  cheered  them  greatly,  the  thought  that 
they  might  by  this  deal  "put  one  over  the  Old  Man." 
The  item  of  the  pipe  line  still  stuck  in  the  craw  of  the 
Homestead  Development  Company.  They  felt  that  they 
were  playing  the  game. 

And  then,  before  the  arrangement  could  be  completed, 
it  went  like  wild-fire  over  the  Fields,  that  Rickart  had 
taken  over  the  Wilts  property,  damage  suit  and  all. 
Somebody  had  leaked.  Jim  Hand  came  roaring  up  to 
Cornelius  Burke. 

"  You dirty,  Irish  spy,  you!"  There  was  the  root 

of  an  old  racial  hatred  between  these  two.  "You  been 
pussy-footin'  around  among  your  honest  neighbors, 
you ." 

"Go  slow,  go  slow,"  Cornelius  warned  him. 

"Slow  as  hell!"  Hand  retorted  on  him. 

One  great  fist,  red  like  a  ham,  shot  out  at  the  Superin 
tendent.  All  the  children  saw  it.  They  had  come  down  to 


THE  FORD  133 

inspect  the  installation  of  the  new  pumps  at  the  Escon- 
dita  group.  They  huddled  together,  fascinated  to  watch 
the  two  great-bodied  men  turning  and  contorted  in  a 
struggle  from  which  issued  a  gasping  stream  of  profan 
ity.  Cornelius  fought  cold  and  remembered  his  youth 
in  the  boom  days  of  Pennsylvania.  Before  the  pump 
hands  pulled  them  apart,  Hand  was  staggering  sick  and 
dazed. 

"Now,  you  rambunctious  fool  you,  what's  eating 
you?"  Cornelius  demanded. 

"Yah!"  Hand  snarled  at  him,  spitting  blood.  "Pre- 
tendin'  you  don't  know.  Ask  them."  He  indicated 
Burke's  assistants  with  a  wave  of  his  hand  on  which  the 
bruised  knuckles  bled.  "Ask  anybody  if  it  ain't  well 
known  that  you're  nothing  but  a  snooper  and  a  spy  for 

that -  .  You  a  well  superintendent!  You  don't 

know  a  well  from  a  hole  in  the  ground.  You're  just  kep' 
on  to  spy,  you ,  I'll  fix  you  for  this."  He  took  him 
self  off  muttering. 

By  noon  it  was  known  all  over  the  Fields  that  Hand 
had  fought  Burke  for  tipping  off  the  Old  Man  to  the 
Burt  and  Estes  deal. 

Brent  came  over  in  the  evening  to  exculpate  the 
Company. 

"I'm  mighty  sorry,  Cornelius;  Hand's  an  unlicked 
brute." 

"I'm  not  holding  it  against  you."  Cornelius  met  him 
cheerfully.  "  'T  is  a  relief  to  a  man's  feelings  to  fight  occa 
sionally.  Besides,  if  I'd  known,  I'd  'a'  told,  maybe. 
'T  would  have  been  my  duty."  Burke  had  almost  said 
"juty";  his  lip  was  cut,  all  the  Irish  stood  out  on  him 
like  a  hallmark. 


134  THE  FORD 

" Perhaps.  It's  all  a  fight,  I  suppose.  You  have  n't  the 
least  idea  who  did  tell,  have  you?  " 

For  a  moment  Burke  seemed  to  consider;  his  unclosed 
eye  traveled  past  Brent  to  Kenneth,  who  had  come  down 
with  his  father,  and  seemed  to  catch  the  boy's  gaze  for  a 
moment  of  singular  if  fleeting  intelligence.  "No,"  he 
said;  "no,  Steven,  I  haven't.  I  had  the  wire  straight 
from  the  San  Francisco  office  to  make  the  deal  with 
Wilts  and  make  it  sudden.  That's  all  I  know." 

"It's  no  use,"  Steven  Brent  told  his  wife  that  night. 
"We  don't  even  know  what's  against  us.  We're  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  carpet.  All  we  see  is  ragged  ends,  and 
now  and  then  a  loose  thread  that  seems  as  if  it  would 
start  something.  But  we  don't  know  what.  It's  a  game, 
Business.  And  it  is  n't  my  game.  I'm  afraid  ranching 's 
all  I'm  good  for,  Molly." 

"You  were  good  at  that,"  she  told  him. 

It  seemed  a  wonderful  concession,  for  which  he  kissed 
her.  He  stood  there  for  a  moment  with  his  arms  around 
her;  some  of  his  care  fell  from  him. 

"We  could  have  the  ranch  back  on  any  terms  almost," 
he  ventured;  "I  reckon  Jevens  knows  when  he's  got 
enough." 

The  children  pricked  and  thrilled.  Palomitas  back! 
But  it  was  too  much  even  to  dream. 

"I  don't  know  where  you'd  get  the  money  for  Palomi 
tas,  if  you  can't  get  it  for  the  wells,"  she  reminded  him. 

Brent  turned  away  wearily. 

"We'll  get  it,"  he  assured  her,  "but  we'll  get  it  on 
their  terms." 

It  was  about  this  time  that  there  began  to  be  a  great 
change  in  Kenneth.  Anne  noticed  it  first,  and  Addie. 


THE  FORD  135 

"Calf  love,"  Addie  opined,  "or  growing  pains;  one  or 
tother;  makes  'em  kind  of  mopy  either  way." 

"Ken  won't  even  look  at  a  girl."  Kenneth's  sister  was 
positive.  "He  does  n't  know  what  girls  are  for!  " 

Nevertheless,  he  moped;  he  fell  silent  in  the  house  and 
took  to  spending  long  hours  roaming  the  hills,  where  he 
would  meet  with  the  returning  sheep  herders,  feeding 
their  flocks  down  from  the  summer  range  in  the  high 
Sierras.  He  would  tend  a  flock  for  such-a-one  half  a  day 
while  the  herder  dozed  or  went  down  to  Summerfield  for 
a  jolly  little  claret  drunk  and  a  game  of  handball  at 
Noriega's.  He  knew  a  few  words  of  the  lingo  by  which 
the  French  and  Basque  and  Mexican  herders  communi 
cate,  and  they  trusted  him  instinctively.  He  was  one  to 
whom  knowledge  of  sheep  came  as  to  musicians  the  han 
dling  of  their  instruments.  Besides  the  secret  relief  to  his 
mind,  the  work  of  herding  saved  him  from  a  certain 
shame  which  he  had  begun  to  experience,  as  he  grew 
taller  and  thinner,  in  the  inadequacy  of  his  lengthening 
limbs  to  anything  that  might  reasonably  be  expected  of 
them.  Nothing  suited  so  well  with  the  languor  of  his 
rapid  growth  as  walking  at  the  head  of  a  flock  out  of 
sight  of  the  oppressive  derricks,  away  from  the  loathed 
smell  of  petroleum,  with  his  arms  extended  on  the  herd 
er's  crook  which  he  laid  across  his  shoulders,  the  dogs 
ambling  friendlily  at  his  knees. 

He  had  room  then  to  attend  to  the  vague  prickings  of 
his  instincts,  sending  up  from  below  the  plane  of  his  con 
sciousness,  where  they  worked,  vague,  pleasing  intima 
tions,  starts  and  warm  floodings  that  mixed  with  the  sug 
gestion  of  presence  that  waits  upon  men  in  the  vast  open 
country.  He  did  not  know  quite  what  it  was  that  they 


136  THE  FORD 

shaped  between  them,  the  land  and  his  instinct;  at  times 
if  he  would  but  turn  his  head  he  would  see  it  there,  and 
yet  he  did  not  turn.  Glimmers  of  the  dream  he  had,  about 
setting  out  with  Addie  across  the  hills  for  the  unnamed 
adventure,  would  wake  in  him,  and  set  him  to  plaiting 
the  tops  of  the  sage  together  as  he  had  seen  the  herders 
do  in  half-conscious  stirrings  of  the  house-building  sense, 
widening  his  shelter  for  the  invisible,  unshaped  compan 
ion.  But  when  no  flock  afforded  him  the  excuse  of  an 
occupation,  he  wore  himself  out,  tramping  as  much  as  he 
thought  his  years  demanded  of  him. 

It  was  on  one  of  these  occasions  that  Anne,  who  was 
the  only  one  of  the  household  at  Petrolia  who  knew  much 
about  them,  climbed  up  to  the  lip  of  the  Sink  to  meet  his 
returning.  This  was  Anne's  birthday  and  a  present  had 
come  by  the  afternoon  mail.  She  showed  it  to  him  now 
as  they  sat  there  together  looking  out  across  the  sunken 
oil  fields  to  the  bluff  of  Summerfield,  wrapped  in  a  cobalt 
haze,  against  the  banked  hills  of  fawn  and  purple.  Anne's 
arm  somehow  seemed  flat,  not  round  like  Virginia's,  and 
the  chased  silver  band  struck  Kenneth  as  an  unsuitable 
ornament. 

Anne  was  quite  miffed  at  his  want  of  appreciation. 
"Anyway  I  should  like  it,"  she  affirmed,  "because  Frank 
sent  it  to  me." 

"Well,  that's  no  reason  for  me  to  like  it." 

"Kenneth!"  The  tone  had  made  her  look  up  at  him 
with  a  start  of  inquiry.  "You  and  Frank  have  n't  quar 
reled,  have  you?"  They  had  neither  of  them  seen  young 
Rickart  since  he  went  away  to  school  about  the  first  of 
September.  "He  said  you  had  n't  answered  his  letter." 

"Nor  ain't  a-going  to  ...  the  snitch!" 


THE  FORD  137 

"Ken!  I  don't  believe  it."  The  connotation  of  the 
word  was  only  vaguely  familiar  to  Anne;  those  two  had 
never  required  many  words,  however. 

"Nothing  to  me  whether  you  believe  it  or  not.  You  can 
send  his  rotten  old  present  back  to  him  for  all  /  care." 
He  swung  himself  out  from  the  lip  and  began  to  clamber 
laboriously  down  between  the  brush  and  stones. 

Anne  called  to  him  once;  she  ran  fast  on  the  trail  to 
overtake  him  as  it  crossed  his  more  difficult  route.  Then 
she  saw  that  she  had  committed  the  unpardonable  of 
fense.  The  young  have  saved,  out  of  their  native  sav 
agery,  wisdom  enough  not  to  look  on  one  another's  per 
sonal  agonies.  Kenneth's  face  streamed  with  tears,  his 
breath  came  sobbing. 

Anne  darted  past  him  quick  as  a  rabbit. 

"Beat  you  down!"  she  called  back,  running.  But  the 
moment  the  turn  of  the  trail  took  her  out  of  sight  she 
began  to  go  slowly.  "I  don't  believe  it,"  she  insisted  to 
herself.  "Anyway,  Ken  ought  to  have  kept  his  mouth 
shut."  Presently  she  took  the  bracelet  from  her  arm  and 
put  it  in  her  pocket. 

That  night  the  waste  from  the  Homestead  gusher  took 
fire.  It  was  thought  that  Soldumbehere  himself  might 
have  set  it.  He  had  come  in  that  evening  at  sundown  with 
the  first  of  his  flocks,  and  camped  about  six  miles  from 
his  corrals.  After  supper  he  had  left  the  sheep  with  the 
head  shepherd  and  walked  across  to  Jim  Hand's.  Sol 
dumbehere  knew  almost  nothing  of  the  gusher;  he  had 
been  gone  since  early  in  April,  and  though  letters  had 
been  sent  him,  they  were  most  of  them  following  still  on 
his  trail  through  the  Sierras.  He  walked  across  the  dry, 
tindery  grass  lands  and  right  through  the  drenched  dis- 


138  THE  FORD 

trict,  smoking  and  perhaps  shaking  out  the  sparks  from 
his  pipe.  There  was  no  moon;  he  guided  himself  by  the 
derrick  lights  and  the  feel  of  the  ground  underfoot;  Sol- 
dumbehere  had  made  his  wintering  ground  about  the 
Sink  for  twenty  years.  He  sat  a  long  time  at  Hand's, 
three  or  four  hours;  there  was  much  to  be  explained  to 
him.  Finally,  when  Jim  let  him  out  the  door,  they  saw 
the  fire  running  like  serpents  in  the  oil-drenched  grass. 

The  Brent  children  knew  nothing  of  it  until  morning; 
fortunately  the  fire  set  with  the  wind  away  from  Petrolia; 
a  thin  line  of  it  still  burned  toward  the  river  bed,  like  a 
streak  of  light  under  a  thick  curtain  of  smoke,  miles 
away.  It  burned  out  there  by  noon,  but  it  had  burned 
Jim  Hand  out  of  house  and  home.  They  had  to  run  for  it 
with  the  children  and  what  they  could  snatch  of  the 
household  goods.  It  burned  Soldumbehere's  corrals,  and 
sheds  and  fences  on  the  Wilts  property.  The  Homestead 
Company  was  resigned.  They  had  dreaded  fire  so  long 
they  were  glad  to  have  it  over  with.  Rickart  would  de 
mand  damages  again,  but  it  was  up  to  Burt  and  Estes. 

Addie  was  almost  cheerful  over  it;  the  more  misfor 
tunes  the  nearer  they  were  to  the  turn.  Even  the  Powers 
must  finally  exhaust  their  bag  of  tricks. 

" Twice  the  fire,  once  the  flood,  and  then  the  fortune," 
she  quoted  to  Mrs.  Brent,  falling  back  on  that  wild  lore 
which  the  earth-born  cull  from  their  wrestle  with  the 
untamed  forces!  It  seemed  to  Kenneth,  however,  that 
his  mother  was  not  taking  it  so  easily.  It  brought  into  her 
voice  again  that  note  of  desperate  rebellion  which  struck 
all  through  him  with  shivers  of  dreadfulness.  He  heard 
it  sounding  in  the  night  through  the  thin-walled  bunga 
low,  the  fretful  sound  of  hopeless  chiding.  It  went  on  for 


THE  FORD  139 

a  week  or  more,  issuing  from  his  mother's  room  at  night, 
the  sharp,  reiterated  protest  and  the  patient,  low  re 
joinder. 

"It's  too  much,  Steven;  it's  too  much.  I  can't  go 
through  with  it.  After  all  I  've  been  through  .  .  .  the  way 
we  Ve  been  disappointed  .  . .  and  now  this  —  when  I 
thought  I  was  done  with  it,  after  fourteen  years.  .  .  . 
Oh,  it's  too  stupid.  .  .  ."  Then  tears  and  the  rising  note 
again.  "I  won't  go  through  with  it.  I  tell  you  I  won't, 
it's  too  much  to  ask  of  a  woman.  .  .  .  Oh,  what  do  you 
men  care!  I'm  going  to  see  Mrs.  Ballard.  She'll  tell  me 
something  ..." 

"Marcia!"  Mr.  Brent  must  have  been  moved,  indeed, 
when  he  called  her  that.  "I'll  not  have  that  woman 
interfering." 

"Well,  I  don't  care!  It's  too  much  to  ask  of  a 
woman  .  .  ." 

Kenneth  would  pull  the  bedclothes  over  his  head  to 
shut  out  the  sound  and  lie  rigid  with  misery.  He  thought 
that  his  mother's  "too  much"  was  all  that  had  grown  out 
of  the  trouble  about  the  money  and  the  way  his  father's 
plans  were  ground  to  powder  between  the  Old  Man  and 
Burt  and  Estes. 


IX 

A  WEEK  or  ten  days  before  Cornelius  Burke  had  removed 
his  family  from  Petrolia,  to  be  installed  in  the  Summer- 
field  office  as  a  sort  of  a  blind  and  buffer  to  the  unf  athom- 
ableness  of  the  Old  Man,  there  had  been  a  conversation 
between  him  and  Steven  Brent,  down  by  the  pump  house, 
which,  as  overheard  by  Kenneth,  seemed  to  press  more 
sorely  still  on  his  sense  of  injury. 

It  began  with  Cornelius  announcing  the  expected 
arrival  within  twenty-four  hours  of  the  new  Superintend 
ent  of  Wells. 

"What's  he  like?"  Brent  had  wished  to  know. 

"The  recommendations  he's  got  sewed  onto  him  are 
something  grand,"  Burke  assured  him,  "but  he's  not  one 
of  us.  You  could  hardly  say  that  of  any  Easterner,  Brent, 
that  he'd  be  one  of  us."  The  repetition  of  the  phrase  and 
the  slight  blur  that  Cornelius's  speech  invariably  took  on 
with  embarrassment  caused  Brent  to  look  up  a  little 
keenly,  but  without  saying  anything. 

"I'm  thinking  you  won't  get  on  with  him,  Steven,  as 
you  have  with  me."  Cornelius  took  his  pipe  out  of  his 
mouth  and  worried  it  with  a  sliver  from  the  rough  plank 
ing  of  the  pump  house.  "'T  is  not,"  he  insisted,  making 
as  if  the  pipe  had  begun  the  argument  and  intended  to 
hold  out  at  it,  "as  if  he  would  know  what  to  do  with  you, 
being,  as  the  saying  is,  neither  the  one  thing  nor  good  red 
herring;  working  for  the  Old  Man  as  you  are,  and  yet 
going  cahoots  with  Burt  and  Estes.  'T  is  like  he  would  n't 
know  half  the  time  whether  you  were  their  man  or  ours." 


THE  FORD  141 

"I  see,"  said  Steven  Brent.  "The  fact  is,  Cornelius, 
I  've  been  my  own  man  too  long.  I  have  n't  got  in  the 
way  of  imagining  such  things." 

"Exactly."  The  Superintendent  had  the  air  of  rejoic 
ing  that  they  had  at  least  that  ground  between  them. 
"It  was  what  I  was  saying  to  MacEvoy  at  the  Mill  when 
he  was  wanting  some  man  who  could  be  trusted  to  get 
out  of  the  boys  the  work  that  you  know  in  reason  is  in 
them.  Mac  knows  so  little  about  it  that  you  would  forget 
that  you  were  working  for  him  entirely.  I  think  you'd 
like  it,  Steven." 

"Meaning  you  think  I'd  better  take  it." 

"I  could  get  it  for  you  as  easy  as  talking." 

"Thank  you  kindly,  Cornelius;  I  guess  I  shouldn't 
have  waited  to  be  fired,  in  any  case."  There  was  no 
rancor  in  the  look  of  deep  understanding  which  passed 
between  them.  A  saving  commonness  in  Cornelius  Burke 
made  of  defeat  a  not  too  unlikely  adventure.  "I  guess  I 
know  when  I've  dished  myself,"  Brent  admitted. 

"I'll  speak  to  Mac  this  afternoon  when  I'm  going  in." 
Having  got  the  better  of  his  pipe,  Cornelius  forgave  it 
and  restored  it  to  his  mouth.  "You're  a  man  of  talent, 
Steven,  but  you're  wasted  when  you  get  board  walk  be 
tween  you  and  the  earth,  and  that's  the  truth." 

When  the  Superintendent  had  taken  himself  off  to  the 
house,  Kenneth  remained  shyly  in  his  father's  neighbor 
hood  hoping  for  some  acknowledgment  of  the  community 
of  slight  which  the  occasion  seemed  to  create.  For  no 
good  reason  the  Rickart  Interest  had  turned  its  back  on 
them.  It  was  one  of  those  moments  in  which  the  incident 
of  sonship  had  been  merged  in  their  common  maleness, 
the  squaring  of  their  shoulders  against  fate.  Looking  up 


142  THE  FORD 

to  catch  Kenneth's  wistful  attention  fixed  on  him,  Steven 
Brent  put  forth  a  hand  to  the  support  of  the  family  bond. 

" Well,  old  man—  " 

The  boy  flashed  back  at  him  a  sudden  bright  compre 
hension. 

" Mother  11  like  living  in  town  a  lot  better." 

The  sureness  with  which  he  touched  on  the  only  point 
that  really  mattered,  cast  Brent  back  for  the  moment  into 
the  shadow  of  an  anxiety  by  which  he  took  Kenneth  the 
more  completely  into  his  confidence. 

"Ah,  let's  hope  she  will,  son;  let's  hope  she  will." 

Matters  stood  thus  until  about  the  beginning  of  the 
Rains,  and  in  the  mean  time  the  children  had  their  own 
problems. 

"Frank's  coming  to  his  aunt's  for  Thanksgiving," 
Anne  confided  to  Virginia,  "and  it's  going  to  be  perfectly 
horrid.  Ken  won't  even  talk  about  him." 

Virginia  was  enchanted  with  the  situation.  "But  of 
course,  if  he  really  did  tell,  I  suppose  we  ought  n't  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  him  either."  It  never  occurred 
to  Virginia  not  to  include  herself  in  the  tribal  difficulty. 

"I  never  did  find  out,"  Anne  confessed;  "I  could  n't 
somehow,  in  a  letter.  Anyway,  I  don't  believe  Frank 
meant  to  be  mean;  he  might  just  have  let  it  out  the  way 
Ken  did." 

Virginia  sighed. 

"If  they  could  only  stick  each  other  with  a  sword  the 
way  men  used  to,  and  then  forget  about  it !  It 's  ever  so 
much  more  sensible,  7  think,  than  spoiling  everything 
with  grudges." 

They  were  sitting  in  her  own  room,  and  as  she  spoke, 
Virginia  could  n't  resist  a  sidelong  glance  at  herself  in  the 


THE  FORD  143 

mirror.  She  thought  the  way  she  was  wearing  her  curls, 
tied  high,  gave  a  flowerlike  droop  to  her  head.  Scraps  of 
romantic  reading  floated  through  her  mind,  of  lovely 
ladies  leaning  out  of  casement  windows  to  watch  the 
mortal  struggles  of  knighthood  in  its  prime.  She  thought 
of  them  as  fighting  for  her  favor,  and  then  it  occurred  to 
her  that  it  would  be  more  interesting  to  think  of  Kenneth 
and  Frank  as  her  and  Anne's  lovers  in  some  deadly  feud; 
whichever  of  them  lost  her  sweetheart  would  retire  into  a 
convent  and  devote  her  life  to  good  deeds.  .  .  .  She  knew 
better,  however,  than  to  speak  of  these  things  to  Anne  - 
Anne  was  so  uppity  when  it  came  to  talking  of  lovers. 

Anne  went  and  sat  on  the  edge  of  Kenneth's  bed  that 
night  after  he  had  turned  in,  and  had  it  out  with  him. 

"I  don't  think  it  was  any  worse  trick  than  you  played 
on  Dad,"  she  insisted;  "letting  things  out  that  way. 
Anyway,  you've  just  got  to  do  something;  going  on  like 
this  is  as  silly  as  Jim  Hand.  If  you  can't  make  friends 
with  him  you've  got  to  lick  him." 

"Catch  old  Frank  standing  up  to  that,"  scoffed  Ken 
neth.  But  he  cleared  the  bedclothes  away  from  his  ear 
the  better  to  listen  to  this  seductive  suggestion. 

Frank  gave  her  more  trouble.  "I  did  n't  do  anything 
except  what  is  perfectly  regular  —  in  business,"  he  pro 
tested.  "I  have  to  look  out  for  my  Old  Man  .  .  .  every 
body  thinks  because  he  is  rich  they  can  stick  him  for 
everything." 

"Well  he  is  rich  .  .  .  and  my  mother  had  always  been 
kind  to  you.  I  should  n't  think  you  'd  want  her  to  be 
poor  always  ..."  Anne  did  n't  spare  him. 

"But  I  never  thought  of  that."  Frank  was  appalled. 
"What  do  you  want  me  to  do,  Anne?" 


144  THE  FORD 

"Make  friends  with  Ken  ...  or  else  let  him  lick  you. 
He's  down  by  the  old  pump  house  this  minute.' ' 

"Me!  Fight  old  Ken  —  he's  two  years  younger  than  I 


am." 


"Oh,"  said  Anne,  "I  don't  believe  that  will  make  as 
much  difference  as  you  think  it  will." 

But  when  the  boys  found  each  other,  all  Anne's  cun 
ning  came  to  nothing  before  the  swift,  overwhelming  fact 
of  how  glad  they  were  to  see  one  another. 

Kenneth  shuffled  uneasily  with  his  foot,  but  his  eyes 
were  shining  .  .  .  "Aw,  go  on,"  he  said  at  last,  "  I  don't 
want  to  fight  you." 

"I  say,  Ken  ...  I  never  thought .  .  ." 

"Neither  did  I  ..."  Kenneth  surveyed  the  tawny  and 
black  landscape.  "Let's  go  somewheres,"  he  offered. 

"All  right  .  .  .  Virginia's  waiting  up  at  the  house  to 
bind  up  my  wounds." 

At  this  characteristic  touch  a  thin  bubble  of  laughter 
broke  between  them. 

"They're  shooting  a  well  over  at  the  Escondita;  we  can 
just  make  it  .  .  ." 

So  a  peace  was  patched  up  which  carried  them  over 
the  week-end  to  Virginia's  Sunday  party  which  was  to 
mark  the  farewell  of  the  Burkes  to  Petrolia.  Virginia's 
faculty  for  making  an  occasion  of  everything  carried 
them  to  such  a  pitch  of  entertainment  that  it  was  not 
until  Kenneth  was  well  on  his  way  home  that  he  discov 
ered  that  all  the  hollow  had  been  retaken  by  one  of  the 
thick  white  fogs  which  at  this  season  haunted  the  bound 
aries  of  ancient  waters.  Feeling  his  way  home  through 
the  ghastly  murk,  Kenneth  became  aware,  by  striking 
his  shins  against  it,  that  he  had  passed  east  of  his  proper 


THE  FORD  145 

path  and  come  up  against  one  of  the  great  pipes  that  led 
to  the  reservoirs  on  the  hill.  He  thought,  however,  that  if 
he  felt  along  it  he  should  presently  come  to  a  cross-line  by 
which  he  could  trace  his  way  back  to  the  trail.  He  trotted 
along,  hoping  for  a  clue,  liking  the  quiet  of  the  night 
and  the  palpable  smother  of  the  fog  which  had  swept 
all  the  day's  warmth  into  the  hollow  before  it.  Finally 
the  slope  of  the  ground  warned  him  that  he  must  have 
struck  above  rather  than  below  the  cross-line.  He  had 
hardly  appreciated  this  discovery  until  he  came  out  quite 
unexpectedly  on  the  rise  of  the  land  abo^re  the  wells,  and 
found  himself  clear  of  fog.  It  lay  all  below  him,  woolly 
white  under  a  watery  moon,  heaving  a  little  and  faintly 
splashed  here  and  there  with  derrick  lights.  All  about  the 
rim  the  reservoirs  clung  like  great  ticks  sucking  the  black 
juices  of  the  land,  bloated  with  it  to  bursting.  The  pitch 
of  the  corrugated  roofs  and  the  open  vents  gave  them  a 
deliberative  air,  as  though  they  calculated,  with  a  slow, 
leech-like  intelligence,  where  next  to  strike.  The  boy  was 
not  afraid  of  the  night  nor  of  the  hills  behind  him,  draw 
ing  into  deep,  velvety  folds  under  the  moon,  but  he  was 
afraid  suddenly  of  that  mysterious  quality  taken  on  by 
the  works  of  man,  power  ungoverned  by  sensibility.  The 
fog,  which  lay  level  with  the  rim  of  the  hollow,  shook  and 
billowed  as  though  the  thing  under  it  which  men  hp,d 
made  had  grown  suddenly  too  big  for  them  and  was  stir 
ring  in  its  own  control. 

It  stirred  and  turned  upon  itself  and  released  a  strange, 
many-limbed  creature  that,  in  the  instant  of  hair-raising 
horror,  while  he  looked,  wormed  its  way  up  the  roof  of  the 
nearest  tank,  the  upper  side  of  which  was  almost  level 
with  the  ground.  The  fog  cleared  into  the  moonlight, 


146  THE  FORD 

however,  and  enabled  him  to  distinguish  the  figures  of 
two  men  that  wrestled  and  broke  apart  and  clutched 
again  in  a  heavy,  breathing  intensity  unbroken  by  any 
other  sound.  He  had  hardly  grasped  the  situation,  had 
not  freed  it  from  the  start  and  shock  of  the  supernatural 
in  which  it  seemed  to  have  begun,  by  the  time  the  two 
figures  had  worked  over  half  the  space  of  the  thin  iron 
roof  toward  the  open  vent.  There  was  an  opening  in 
every  tank,  left  so  for  the  escape  of  gases  that  gathered 
above  the  oil  under  the  steady  sun,  and  it  occurred  to 
Kenneth  that  one  of  the  men  might  have  been  the 
watchman  closing  the  tanks  against  the  chance  of  rain. 
If  it  had  been  the  purpose  of  the  second  man  to  prevent 
him,  he  was  making  no  headway  in  the  terrible,  keen 
wrestle  which  carried  them  every  moment  nearer  the 
vent.  It  was  in  the  instant  that  they  rocked  together  on 
the  very  edge  of  it  that  Kenneth's  recognition  of  the 
danger  burst  from  him  in  a  cry,  shrilled  by  his  own  recent 
shock  of  ghostly  fear.  It  caught  the  wrestlers  in  mid- 
clutch,  and  with  the  start  and  the  loosening  hold  the 
figure  which  had  been  pressing  the  other  toward  the  rim 
of  the  vent,  sprang  backward,  gave  a  swift,  running 
leap  and  plunged  into  the  crawling  smother  of  the  fog 
not  ten  feet  away  from  where  Kenneth  stood.  He  had 
instinctively  shut  his  eyes  in  the  crisis  of  his  astonish 
ment,  and  when  he  opened  them  the  second  figure  was 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  For  a  moment  he  stared  at  the 
empty  roof,  ribbed  in  thin  lines  of  light  and  shadow  by 
the  watery  moon.  Then  suddenly  a  horrible  thing  arose 
upon  him  from  the  vent;  black  and  glistening  with  its 
native  slime  it  crawled  blindly  out  and  toward  him, 
shaking  its  unrecognizable  head  and  pawing  at  it  with 


THE  FORD  147 

slimy,  shapeless  hands.  The  unexpectedness  of  the  ap 
parition,  falling  in  with  all  his  secret  thought  about  the 
wells  and  the  strange,  unearthly  life  of  the  derricks,  was 
stronger  than  the  obvious  explanation. 

With  a  sharp  sob  of  terror,  Kenneth  turned  and  plunged 
into  the  friendly  cover  of  the  fog.  He  ran  a  long  time 
blindly,  falling  and  rising  to  run  again  without  pausing  to 
take  note  of  his  direction,  until,  by  the  process  of  stum 
bling  over  them,  he  had  accounted  for  the  most  familiar 
of  the  iron  ribs  that  held  the  place  together.  Once  the  ac 
customed  touch  of  the  Escondita  pipes  had  restored  him, 
his  feet  carried  him  almost  unconsciously  in  the  direc 
tion  of  a  yellow  smear  issuing  from  the  opened  doors  and 
windows  of  a  house  that,  as  he  approached  it,  swelled  out 
upon  him  suddenly,  full  of  running  figures  and  low,  ex 
cited  noises.  He  saw  them  pass  and  repass  the  blurred 
squares  of  the  windows  and  then  one,  touched  with  a 
certain  familiarity,  leaped  out  through  the  wedge  of  an 
opened  door  and  was  swallowed  up  by  the  fog.  It  was  a 
full  minute  before  he  realized  that  the  house  was  his  own 
home  and  the  figure  Peters.  It  was  some  minutes  more 
before  he  fairly  recovered  his  wits;  then  suspecting  that 
the  stir  and  the  anxiety  might  be  on  his  account,  for  he 
had  no  notion  how  long  he  had  been  blundering  about  in 
the  fog,  he  went  briskly  up  the  back  steps  where  the  light 
on  that  side  of  the  house  was  brightest. 

"H — ssh!"  Addie  warned  him;  she  was  nursing  a 
kettle  of  water  over  the  fire  newly  kindled.  " Where's 
Anne?" 

He  was  answering  her  in  a  usual  tone,  for  the  arrange 
ment  had  been  perfectly  aboveboard  that  his  sister  was 
to  stay  the  night  with  Virginia,  and  he  resented  the  im- 


148  THE  FORD 

plication  of  her  caution;  but  "Hush!"  she  said  again. 
She  was  listening,  strained  and  anxiously  toward  the 
living-room,  where  now  he  could  make  out  the  figure  of  a 
Summerfield  doctor  and  a  woman  in  a  nurse's  dress  who 
came  to  the  doctor's  side  for  a  moment  and  disappeared 
again  in  his  mother's  room. 

"Mis'  Brent's  took  bad,"  Addie  told  him;  he  caught 
the  degree  of  seriousness  from  her  use  of  the  title.  Ordi 
narily  Addie  referred  to  her  mistress  as  "your  ma." 

"Where's  my  father?" 

"In  there."  The  jerk  of  Addie's  head,  as  she  blew  the 
flame,  was  toward  the  door  of  his  mother's  room,  made 
all  at  once  mysterious,  unenterable. 

Kenneth  wandered  into  the  living-room  where  pres 
ently,  as  the  doctor  and  the  nurse  consulted  together  in 
low  tones,  he  thought  they  must  have  mentioned  him. 

"He'd  better  go  to  bed,"  he  heard  the  doctor  say;  but 
no  one  spoke  to  him  nor  asked  where  he  had  been  so  long. 
In  his  own  room  at  last,  he  began  to  undress,  but  the  wall 
between  it  and  his  mother's  room  was  thin;  sounds  came 
through  to  him,  unbearable.  He  sat  there  on  the  edge  of 
his  bed  with  his  hands  over  his  ears  until  he  heard  the 
noise  in  the  kitchen  made  by  Peters's  returning  with 
Anne  and  Mrs.  Burke.  Though  the  night  was  not  cold, 
he  found  them  hovered  over  the  stove,  in  some  vague 
world-old  movement  toward  fire,  the  comforter. 

"I'd  have  come  sooner,"  Mrs. Burke  was  saying,  "but 
with  Cornelius  out  and  no  one  to  stay  with  the  children 
—  and  the  state  he  was  in  when  he  did  come  —  and  me 
telling  him  he 's  no  business  at  the  tanks  when  he  comes 
from  the  lodge.  But  that 's  nothing  when  there 's  the  like 
of  this  in  a  neighbor's  house  ..."  She  broke  off  to  hold  a 


THE  FORD  149 

whispered  colloquy  with  the  nurse  who  came  out  of  Mrs. 
Brent's  room. 

Kenneth  caught  at  some  strayed  ends  of  it. 

".  .  .  Of  course  I  don't  know  ...  I  would  n't  like  to 
•say."  This  was  from  the  nurse. 

".  .  .  No  good  comes  from  fooling  with  them  things, 
ever.  Better  go  through  with  it,  I  say  .  .  .  That  Ballard 
woman  ...  Of  course  I've  had  my  suspicions  ..." 

The  children  went  and  sat  together  on  the  lounge  in  the 
living-room.  Once  their  father  came  out  of  the  bedroom 
and  caught  sight  of  them  there;  he  turned  suddenly 
as  a  man  struck  in  the  face,  and  walked  away  from 
them. 

After  a  while  Anne  managed  in  a  dry  whisper —  "  Is  she 
going  to  die?  "  But  they  neither  of  them  knew  the  answer 
to  that.  Presently  Mrs.  Burke  made  them  both  go  into 
Anne's  room  and  lie  down.  Anne  lay  on  the  bed  and 
Kenneth  on  the  window  seat.  There  was  no  light  in  the 
room. 

They  lay  very  quietly,  until  Anne  could  bear  it  no 
longer  - 

"Ken,  you  asleep?" 

"No.  You?" 

"I'm  not  going  to.  Don't  you." 

"All  right." 

And  then  after  a  little  — 

"Ken—" 

"All  right,  Anne,—  " 

But  they  must  have  slept  at  last,  for  they  had  not 
heard  Mrs.  Burke  come  into  the  room  until  she  stood  over 
them. 

"Come  now,"  she  said,  "your  father  wants  you." 


150  THE  FORD 

They  found  him  by  their  mother's  bed,  sunk  in  such  an 
intensity  of  wordless  protest  at  what  was  going  on  that 
he  seemed  at  first  not  to  see  them,  but  presently,  as  they 
stood  there  miserably  beside  him,  he  gathered  them  to 
him  in  uncertain,  trembling  snatches.  The  sash  curtain 
was  drawn,  but  above  it  through  the  narrow  panes  they 
could  see  the  fog  whitened  by  morning,  hurrying  and 
astir.  There  was  a  heavy,  druggy  smell  in  the  room  and 
the  smell  of  the  night  lamp  struggling  with  the  rakish 
dawn.  Kenneth  was  aware  of  the  subsidence  of  the  huge 
sense  of  disorder  which  had  encompassed  the  household 
in  the  night.  It  seemed  to  withdraw  from  the  narrow, 
thin-walled  room  with  the  nurse  and  the  neighbors,  clus 
tered  together  in  the  room  beyond.  He  dared  then  to  look 
back  at  his  mother  when  he  saw  them  turn  their  backs, 
for  he  thought  she  must  be  better.  She  lay  there  very 
quietly,  with  blotched,  bluish  shadows  wavering  on  her 
face.  He  bent,  as  his  father  bade  him,  to  kiss  her,  but  the 
lips  that  moved  in  the  beginning  of  the  caress  shaped 
themselves  to  the  ceaseless,  frightened  utterance  of  her 
husband's  name. 

"  Steven." 

"Yes,  Molly."  And  then,  in  a  moment,  as  if  the  as 
surance  had  passed  out  of  memory,  "Steven,"  and  again, 
"I'm  here,  Molly."  He  held  fast  to  one  of  the  shapely, 
flaccid  hands,  and  presently  the  doctor,  who  from  the  op 
posite  side  of  the  bed  had  kept  a  finger  on  the  pulse  of  the 
other,  relinquished  it  to  him  and  moved  to  join  the  women 
grouped  all  so  silently  about  the  table  in  the  other  room. 
The  cry  from  the  bed  became  a  mere  breathy  whisper;  it 
ceased  altogether.  Presently  Mrs.  Burke  came  in  and 
drew  a  sheet  across  the  so  strangely  shadowed  face;  as 


THE  FORD  151 

she  touched  it  the  body  on  the  bed  gave  a  tiny  leap  and  a 
little  rasping  croak. 

All  this  time  Kenneth  did  not  feel  anything  at  all.  He 
watched  Anne  and  did  as  she  did,  for  he  was  afraid  that 
people  would  think  he  had  not  loved  his  mother.  He  was 
thankful  when  he  could  cry  a  little  as  he  did  sometimes  to 
see  the  body  lying  so  stark,  but  he  could  not  think  that  it 
was  his  dear  mother  who  had  died.  He  was  continually 
catching  himself  up  in  shamed,  trivial  interests  as  to  the 
number  of  carriages  at  the  funeral  and  a  certain  defiance 
of  Addie's  toward  the  women  whispering  in  groups  about 
the  house. 

Cornelius  Burke  did  not  put  in  an  appearance  until 
the  funeral;  his  face  was  strangely  scrubbed-looking  and 
shiny  and  there  was  a  bandage  about  his  head.  Anne  told 
him  afterward  that  Virginia  had  said  that  her  father  had 
fallen  into  the  tank  the  night  their  mother  died.  Kenneth 
remembered  the  figure  he  had  seen  crawling  toward  him 
across  the  corrugated  roof,  but  it  did  not  seem  worth 
speaking  about.  He  was  afraid  to  speak  of  anything  but 
the  most  trivial  and  immediate  interests  lest  this  hollow 
shell  of  insensibility  should  fall  in  on  him  and  crush  him 
with  the  terrible  knowledge  of  his  complicity  in  his 
mother's  death.  Thursday,  the  week  of  the  funeral,  it  fell. 
Mrs.  Burke  had  taken  Anne  away  with  her  because  the 
child  was  making  herself  sick.  It  was  a  troubled  night,  full 
of  the  presage  of  rain.  Kenneth  lay  in  his  bed  and  heard 
his  father  —  walking  —  walking  on  the  long  veranda, 
fourteen  paces  from  the  door  to  the  hanging  olla,  five  from 
that  to  the  kitchen  wing,  then  nineteen  paces  back  and 
one  to  turn.  Kenneth  counted  them  over  and  over  be 
cause,  when  one  has  lost  all  capacity  to  feel,  one  does  not 


152  THE  FORD 

think  very  much  either;  he  could  feel  so  little  that  all 
there  was  alive  of  him  went  into  the  numbers.  He  did 
not  believe  that  he  had  slept  at  all,  but  lying  there  count 
ing  steadily  he  fell  into  a  dream.  It  was  of  a  time  long  ago 
when  his  father  had  been  away  in  San  Francisco  for  a  week 
and  his  mother  had  allowed  him  to  come  into  her  bed. 
In  his  own  bed  now,  he  felt  quite  plainly  her  arm  over  him, 
soft  and  firm,  and  the  dear  warmth  of  her  body  and  the 
faint  fragrance  of  it ...  he  had  almost  slipped  off  into 
sleep  under  the  tender  certainty  —  and  then  all  at  once 
he  snapped  into  the  waking  realization  that  she  was  not 
there,  that  she  would  never  be  there- for  him  again.  .  .  . 

He  broke  out  crying  terribly  at  that.  Just  as  he  was  he 
ran  out  into  the  kitchen.  His  need  of  a  human  breast  was 
so  sharp  —  there  was  nobody  there  with  Addie  but 
Peters,  the  two  of  them  sitting  solemnly  on  either  side  of 
the  stove.  And  Addie  did  not  fail  him.  She  gathered  him 
into  her  young  lap  and  rocked  him  to  and  fro.  "Oh,  you 
pore  young  one  — "  The  mothering  cry  of  her  pierced  the 
heart  of  his  sore  reserve. 

"Oh,  Addie,  it  was  me  —  it  was  me  that  did  it!  She 
did  n't  want  to  be  poor  always  .  .  .  and  I  told,  and  Frank, 
he  told...  about  Burt  and  Estes  .  .  .  Oh  .  .  .  Oh!" 
His  whole  body  wrenched  with  self-reproaches.  Above 
his  shaking  shoulders  Addie  formed  words  with  her  lips. 
Peters  rose  softly  and  set  the  door  wide  as  the  pacing 
steps  outside  drew  nearer.  Opposite  the  threshold  they 
were  stayed  for  a  moment  by  the  boy's  bursting  cry.  "She 
did  n't  w.ant  to  be  poor  always  ...  she  did  n't  want 
to  .  .  ." 

"Son,  son!" 

Kenneth  felt  Ms  grief  cut  off,  torn  from  him  by  the  vio- 


THE  FORD  153 

lence  of  that  protest;  the  sob  stayed  in  his  throat  and 
died  there.  Somehow  from  his  father's  white  staring  face 
he  caught  a  sense  of  the  community  of  blame.  Between 
them  they  had  let  this  thing  happen. 

" Father,  father!"  The  anguish  of  it  snatched  them  to 
each  other  across  the  intervening  space.  He  was  half  con 
scious  of  the  coat  Addie  had  flung  about  him,  and  then 
the  door  was  shut  softly  behind  them.  Down  on  the 
steps  of  the  veranda  between  his  father's  knees  the  story 
sobbed  itself  out. 

"I  did  n't  know  it  would  make  all  that  difference  .  .  . 
Anne  told  me  to  keep  my  mouth  shut .  .  .  but  Frank 
teased  me,  —  he  was  always  trying  to  be  so  smart."  He 
had  no  words  for  the  weakness  by  which  the  information 
had  been  taunted  out  of  him. 

"It  would  have  happened  just  the  same,"  Brent 
soothed  him.  "It  was  n't  right  for  you  to  tell  business 
matters,  other  people's  business  ...  it  might  have  hap 
pened  differently,  but  it  has  n't  really  made  any  difference 
—  about  —  your  mother  leaving  us.  You  must  believe 
that,  Ken." 

The  boy  was  uncomforted. 

"She  did  n't  want  to  be  poor  always  .  .  .  she  could  n't 
bear  it." 

"Oh,  God!  Oh,  God!"  Brent's  heart  was  racked. 

Kenneth  crept  up  with  his  arms  about  his  father's 
body. 

"I  did  n't  mean  anything,  father,  I  did  n't  think  — " 

"Oh,  son,  that's  the  way  with  men.  .  .  .  We  don't  any 
of  us  mean  .  .  .  We  do  what  we  like  at  the  time  we  like  it, 
and  we  don't  remember  how  things  are  with  women. 
Things  last  so  with  women.  ...  It's  all  over  with  us  in 


154  THE  FORD 

a  moment,  but  it  goes  on  ...  for  them  ...  it  goes  on. 
You  've  got  to  remember  that,  Kenneth,  there 's  nothing 
you  can  do  anywhere  but  it  gets  back  to  some  woman 
...  it  gets  back  .  .  .  and  then  you  sweat  and  pray,  but 
you  can't  take  it  off  ...  you  can't  take  it  off  ...  Oh, 
God!" 

He  fairly  shook  his  son  by  the  shoulders  in  the  stress  of 
remembering  what  it  was  he  could  n't  take  off  the  dear 
dead.  The  boy  cried  aloud. 

"Oh,  no,  no,  father!"  He  burrowed  in  his  father's 
arms,  stricken  with  the  terrible  fret  and  tragedy  of  men: 
never  to  move  out  freely,  never  to  strike  or  to  run  but  to 
loose  somewhere  the  arrows  of  desolation. 

" You've  got  to  know,  boy  ...  it  would  have  been 
better  if  I'd  known  it.  Not  that  this  you  've  been  telling 
me  had  anything  to  do  with  —  made  any  real  difference. 
You  're  not  to  worry  about  that  any  more,  Ken.  Ken,  do 
you  hear  me?" 

"Yes,  father." 

"You're  almost  a  young  man  now,  and  there's  some 
thing  men  ought  n't  to  be  left  to  find  out  for  themselves, 
and  that  is  that  they  can't  make  a  woman's  life  for  her. 
Not  by  just  doing  the  things  they  like  and  thinking  they 
can  keep  the  rough  ends  from  her.  Things  get  through  to 
her  .  .  .  there's  no  way  in  the  world.  .  .  .  And  it's  too 
late  when  you  find  it  out  ...  too  late  .  .  ."  He  broke  off, 
gazing  into  the  thick  dark  night.  Now  and  then  he  gave 
a  convulsive  clutch  at  the  boy's  slim  body  as  if  for  de 
fense  against  what  he  saw  in  it. 

"You  thmk"  —  he  corrected  himself  —  "/  thought  I 
could  make  a  life  for  your  mother  out  of  my  life,  a  kind 
of  hollow  cell  in  it,  where  she  should  be  perfectly  happy 


THE  FORD  155 

inside  of  all  the  things  I  knew  from  the  beginning  she 
did  n't  like  .  .  .  but  they  got  to  her,  boy,  I  brought  them 
to  her.  You  can't  go  to  them  without  taking  something, 
boy.  It  rides  on  your  back.  And  then  they  leave  you 
.  .  .  you  can't  blame  them  for  that.  They  've  got  to  have 
their  own  life,  Kenneth,  they ' ve  got  to  make  it  themselves 
if  you  want  them  to  stay  in  it  .  .  ."  His  voice  fell  dry 
and  whispering;  he  was  beating  out  the  truth  against  his 
own  breast  and  dying  under  the  blows. 

"And  they're  worth  it  all,"  he  groaned;  "you  know 
that  when  you've  lost  them  .  .  .  worth  all  the  things 
you've  lost  for  them.  .  .  .  They  leave  you  with  the  thing 
you  've  sold  them  for,  and  it 's  dust  and  ashes.  And  you 
can't  call  them  back  to  tell  them.  They  don't  come  back. 
Not  for  an  hour  .  .  .  one  little  hour  .  .  .  Marcia,  Marcia!" 
Something  started  back  from  that  cry  —  the  common 
life  of  the  household  was  affrighted  at  the  anguish  of  man. 
It  beat  against  the  invisible  wall. 

The  boy  stirred  in  his  father's  arms  vaguely,  protesting. 
As  if  in  answer  something  warm  and  near  flowed  suddenly 
over  him;  he  felt  himself  bathed  in  tenderness  as  his  lips 
quivered  past  his  father's  cheek. 

"She's  not  mad  with  us,"  he  breathed. 

"Your  mother.   How  could  she  be  —  with  you  .  .  ." 

"With  us,  with  us!"  He  was  sure  of  it.  "Just  now  — 
in  there  —  in  the  bed."  Trembling  seized  on  them.  "It 
was  like  a  long  time  ago,  when  you  were  n't  here.  It  was 
like  it  was  then.  She  was  n't  mad  with  me,  father;  she 
is  n't  mad  with  us  now."  He  caught  Brent  about  the 
neck  in  the  eagerness  of  his  insistence.  "She  knows  we 
did  n't  mean  it,  father  ..."  Through  the  dark  and  the 
empty  space  forgiveness  filtered  to  them.  They  scarcely 


156  THE  FORD 

breathed,  not  to  miss  one  melting  touch  of  it.  Whether 
from  the  passing  dead  or  from  the  deep  wells  of  conscious 
ness  in  which  loving  is  stored  and  from  which  it  may  be 
drawn  again  by  the  beloved  in  departing,  the  power  of  it 
rose  upon  them  again  with  relieving  tears. 


BOOK  SECOND 


AROUND  the  years  immediately  succeeding  his  mother's 
death,  there  was  always  a  numb  place  in  Kenneth's  mem 
ory.  The  removal  of  the  family  from  Petrolia  to  Summer- 
field  narrowed  their  circle  of  intimates  to  the  Burkes  and 
Addie.  For  with  the  removal  of  Brent  from  the  aegis  of  the 
Old  Man's  employment,  the  family  lost  ground  surpris 
ingly. 

In  Summerfield  there  had  always  been  about  "The 
Company/'  -  as  it  came  to  be  called  as  Rickart  with 
drew  his  personality  more  and  more  behind  the  mul 
tiplicity  of  interests,  —  a  certain  distinction,  even  a  dis 
tinction  of  reprobation.  The  stripe  of  his  financial  pre 
eminence  was  over  all  his  employees,  the  stripe,  too,  of 
his  iniquities.  In  the  environment  of  Steven  Brent's  new 
occupation,  people  fawned  upon  or  defied  the  Old  Man 
as  they  imagined  that  their  interests  were  served  or  op 
posed,  and  always  secretly  despised  him.  The  Brent  chil 
dren,  informed  by  the  sure  instinct  of  youth  that  he  had 
really  liked  and  been  interested  in  them,  shared  neither 
the  sordid  railings  of  Jim  Hand  nor  the  cheap  disloyalties 
of  Ballard.  And  yet  by  an  equal  instinct  they  checked 
the  quick  start  of  interest,  the  old  sense  of  possession  in 
his  public  enterprises  that  belonged  to  their  memories 
of  Agua  Caliente.  Between  the  two  they  fell  back  on  the 
reticences  of  adolescence,  which  they  kept  even  with  one 
another. 

Frank  they  did  not  see  for  the  whole  of  the  next  two 
years.  The  summer  after  Mrs.  Brent's  death  he  went 


160  THE  FORD 

abroad  with  a  tutor;  his  passage  was  marked  by  a  trail  of 
picture  postcards  and  an  occasional  trinket  for  Anne. 
There  was  very  little  exchange  between  the  two  boys,  but 
Anne  noticed  that  at  the  High  School  Kenneth  made  no 
intimates;  Anne  was  of  a  noticing  disposition. 

By  their  removal  from  Petrolia  they  had  apparently 
dropped  the  affairs  of  the  Homestead  Development  Com 
pany  behind  them,  or  rather  those  affairs  had  dropped 
into  the  capacious  jaws  of  the  Capital  which  had  rescued 
them  so  hardly  from  the  steam  roller  of  the  Bickart  in 
terests.  Nominally  they  held  their  stock  intact,  but  Burt 
and  Estes  did  what  they  pleased  with  it.  The  Scudders 
dropped  out  first,  exchanging  their  shares  for  a  starved, 
alkalied  eighty  acres  of  the  newly  opened  orchard  tract, 
happier,  perhaps,  than  they  would  have  been  with  a 
fatter  allotment.  They  had  lived  life  so  close  to  the  bone 
always.  Jim  Hand  took  to  drink ;  his  bitterness  died  down 
to  a  sullen  grudge  against  Cornelius  Burke,  and  when  he 
was  in  liquor  an  inexplicable  flare-up  of  secret  exultation. 

The  Brents  spoke  seldom  of  their  Petrolia  property. 
Now  and  then  it  came  to  the  surface  of  speculation  be 
tween  brother  and  sister  when  they  found  occasion  to 
wonder  whether  they  would  go  to  college,  or  by  what 
handle  they  were  to  lay  hold  of  life. 

"Of  course,  if  father  could  get  what 's coming  to  him — " 
Anne  would  begin;  but  the  contingency  was  too  remote 
even  for  the  large  hopes  of  adolescence.  The  future  had 
not  yet  taken  hold  of  Kenneth.  When  he  thought  about 
it  at  all,,  it  was  merely  that  he  would  not  like  to  have 
to  spend  it  in  Summerfield.  The  place  which  it  should 
have  occupied  in  his  mind  was  filled  with  wholly  pagan 
revelations  of  identity.  The  principal  of  the  High  School 


THE  FORD  161 

that  year  had  .been  a  college  man,  interested  in  athletics, 
and  he  had  taken  Kenneth  with  the  snare  of  that  strange, 
intimate  delight,  the  mastery  over  his  own  body.  To  go 
looping  and  flying  through  rings  and  bars,  his  feet  pointed, 
his  flat  young  torso  arched  and  springy,  brought  him  to 
self-realizations  such  as  come  ordinarily  only  through  per 
sonal  passion.  The  satiny,  smooth  feeling  of  his  skin  and 
the  taut  muscles  shored  him  up  against  the  sense  of  family 
defeat.  He  threw  himself  into  physical  competence  as 
into  the  balance  against  an  indefinable  weediness,  a 
slackness  of  his  surfaces,  which  after  his  wife's  death  be 
gan  to  come  over  Steven  Brent.  Often  with  some  young 
devotee  like  himself,  stripped  to  the  primary  require 
ment,  Kenneth  would  loose  himself  to  running,  and  hip  to 
hip  pad  out  for  miles  of  the  country  roads  made  elastic 
with  crude  oil  and  sand.  Sometimes  as  he  ran  he  would 
hear  behind  or  before  him  the  honk  of  a  motor,  and  Rick- 
art's  great  car  would  go  careening  between  the  weedy 
roadside  and  the  young  orchards.  Then  Kenneth  would 
tuck  down  his  head  and  bend  to  his  running,  not  to  seem 
to  see  the  figure  of  Frank's  father  in  the  tonneau,  timing 
the  circle  of  his  thoughts  with  his  cigar.  And  always  for  a 
little  after  that,  the  wings  of  his  running  would  drop  and 
leave  him  nothing  but  the  mechanical  pound  of  his  heart 
and  the  lift  and  fall  of  his  feet  on  the  highway. 

As  the  second  summer  passed  he  grewjathy  with  exer 
cise,  his  hair,  which  had  been  too  light  always,  darkened, 
his  skin  took  on  a  fine  clear  brown  with  just  a  suspicion 
of  down  on  the  cheek.  Women  who  passed  him  turned  to 
look  and  said  that  he  was  a  handsome  lad.  But  he  was 
not  yet  interested  in  what  women  would  think  of  him. 
All  his  young  loneliness,  the  vague  disquiet  of  the  nights, 


162  THE  FORD 

were  bound  up  with  thoughts  of  his  mother.  When  he 
would  come  in  late  to  the  sense  of  something  lacking  in 
the  house,  something  sought  and  not  found  for  all  his 
running,  he  would  turn  his  head  fiercely  on  the  pillow  and 
plunge  into  sleep  as  a  rabbit  to  cover.  Then  he  would 
spring  out  of  bed  the  moment  he  wakened,  for  to  lie 
drowsing  was  to  invite  the  aching  lack,  the  immanent, 
terrifying  emptiness.  But  he  did  not  think  of  women  or 
girls  yet  save  with  exasperation;  Virginia  even  —  he  was 
very  fond  of  Virginia  in  the  old  way,  but  of  late  there  had 
come  into  her  manner  to  him  a  demand  for  something  — 
something  which  he  could  not  put  a  name  to,  but  never 
theless  he  did  not  mean  to  pay.  He  put  it  down,  as  far 
as  he  was  able  to  formulate  it  at  all,  to  the  admitted  silli 
ness  of  girls,  but  it  made  him  by  turns  both  fierce  and 
ashamed. 

As  yet  the  future  had  not  called  him ;  only  as  he  ran  the 
past  cleared,  the  failure  at  Palomitas,  his  mother's  death, 
were  lifted  out  of  the  obscure  region  of  his  feelings  about 
them  and  floated  as  the  outlines  of  the  Torr'  clear  of  the 
evening  haze.  He  saw  them  as  events  merely,  hard,  rea 
sonless  features  of  the  landscape  in  which  he  was  to  find 
his  way  about.  He  did  not  yet  think  of  any  way  out 
and  beyond  them. 

He  grew  closer  to  Anne  in  their  social  isolation  and  yet 
farther  from  her.  She  had  long  since  passed  him  at 
school,  and  now  she  began  to  lengthen  her  skirts  and  to 
display  traits  of  " silliness,"  as  when  she  had  confided  to 
him  her  suspicion  that  Peters  was  "  sweet  on  Addie." 

Peters,  deprived  of  any  possible  employment  under 
Mr.  Brent,  had  taken  to  agriculture.  He  had  made  a  first 
payment  on  forty  acres  and  was  planting  it  to  prunes. 


THE  FORD  163 

Three  or  four  evenings  a  week  he  would  drop  in  on  the 
Brents  and  discuss  his  adventure  with  the  family,  of 
which  Addie  was  an  interested  and  integral  member. 

Kenneth  hoped  that  Addie  would  not  be  misled  by  it. 

" Peters  respects  you,  Addie,"  he  took  the  first  oppor 
tunity  to  warn  her. 

"My  land!  He  better!"  Addie  flared  back  at  him. 

Steven  Brent,  however,  was  disposed  to  take  the  situ 
ation  seriously.  "I  hope  you  won't  think  of  leaving  us 
just  yet,  Addie."  He  put  it  to  her  one  day  while  Peters 
hung  sheepishly  in  the  offing. 

"Well,  you  need  n't  to  fear  my  bein'  et  up  with  the  idee 
of  marryin'  so  long  as  I  don't  see  nothin'  but  what  I  do 
see!"  Addie  soaped  her  dishrag  and  polished  off  the 
unfortunate  Peters  with  finality. 

"But  you  know  Peters  is  fond  of  you,"  Anne  had  in 
sisted  privately;  "I  shouldn't  think  you'd  have  him 
around  so  much  if  you  don't  mean  to  take  him." 

' '  I  kind  of  hate  to, "  Addie  confessed ; "  he '  s  so  humbly. ' ' 

"Well,  I  guess  he  is  n't  any  homelier  than  you  are." 
Anne  had  the  fine,  careless  cruelty  of  youth. 

Addie,  however,  was  beyond  vanity. 

"I  reckon  that's  so,"  she  admitted;  "but  if  we  was  to 
have  young  ones  that  took  after  both  of  us,  don't  it  look 
like  that  would  be  kind  of  stackin'  things  up  against 
'em?" 

And  Anne  found  that  unanswerable. 

Before  the  second  year  was  out  Anne  had  her  own 
problem.  It  was  to  wake  Kenneth  to  a  sense  of  the  future. 
So  far  it  held  nothing  for  him  but  the  rather  vague  hope 
of  going  to  college  which  had  been  his  father's  plan  for 
him  as  far  back  as  they  could  remember.  Anne  nipped 


164  THE  FORD 

that  bud  decisively.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  change 
that  had  come  to  Steven  Brent  that  neither  of  his  chil 
dren  thought  of  resorting  to  his  opinion. 

"Burt  and  Estes  won't  do  anything  while  the  price  of 
oil  is  so  low,  and  for  father  to  sell  now  would  be  just  giv 
ing  it  away,"  Anne  decided. 

For  want  of  any  light  on  his  own  situation  Kenneth  re 
torted  on  his  sister. 

"What  you  going  to  do?" 

"There's  father  to  take  care  of;  I  don't  know  whether 
you  've  noticed  it,  Ken,  but  father 's  not  what  he  used  to 
be." 

He  had  noticed  it;  for  a  long  tune  his  sole  defense 
against  what  threatened  in  Steven  Brent's  slacked 
shoulders  and  growing  uncertainty  of  manner,  had  been 
his  own  bodily  proficiency.  He  had  braced  himself 
against  it  by  personal  severities  as  against  some  insidious 
disorder.  Now  that  it  was  before  him  in  so  many  words, 
he  was  struck  suddenly  with  the  futility  of  all  his  effort. 

"  Sometimes,"  said  Anne  across  the  table, "  I  'm  afraid." 
He  dared  not  ask  her  of  what,  but  presently  she  enlight 
ened  him.  "If  Mr.  MacEvoy  should  get  a  notion  that 
father  is  n't  quite  equal  to  the  Mill,  if  any  little  thing 
should  go  wrong  —  it  would  just  about  kill  father  to 
lose  this  job."  Anne's  knuckles  tightened  the  way  her 
mother's  used  to  do. 

"I  could  get  some  kind  of  work  with  The  Company," 
Kenneth  threw  out  by  way  of  support. 

' '  Oh,  there 's  plenty  of  work  I "  Anne  flung  back  at  him. 
"Is  n't  there  anything  that  you  really  want  to  do?" 

He  resisted  the  impulse  to  tell  her  of  his  secret  wish  to 
buy  back  Palomitas;  it  was  often  in  his  mind  as  he  ran 


THE  FORD  165 

through  the  countryside,  filled  with  the  scent  of  new- 
turned  furrows  and  the  bubble  of  water  in  the  zanja.  He 
was  not  altogether  free  from  the  notion  that  doing  what 
you  liked  and  doing  it  with  all  that  was  in  you,  was  not 
properly  a  career.  He  saw  that  Anne  wanted  for  him  a 
path  marked  out  by  blazing  ambitions.  He  would  have 
been  very  happy  to  find  himself  walking  in  such  a  one, 
but  there  was  nothing  in  himself  which  pointed  the  way 
to  it. 

Frank  came  back  that  winter  and  the  two  of  them  had 
a  week's  hunting  at  Agua  Caliente  in  which  the  old 
warmth  surged  back  between  them,  and  Frank  talked 
largely  of  what  he  meant  to  do  in  the  world  and  with  it. 

But  it  was  a  world  unimaginable  to  Kenneth,  a  world 
of  stakes  and  reprisals,  of  half  gods,  who  neither  made 
nor  unmade,  but  snatched  up  the  things  that  the  million 
made  and  threw  them  about  in  their  colossal  rages,  as  in 
the  old  days  they  had  flung  the  foundations  of  the  earth. 
All  this  vast  acreage  of  Agua  Caliente,  the  long,  lion-like 
valley  which  still  held  for  Kenneth  the  only  sense  of 
home,  of  the  continuity  of  existence,  was  to  his  friend  one 
of  the  pieces  of  the  game.  The  river  with  its  fruitful  pos 
sibilities  he  would  have  wound  up  like  a  scarf  and  tossed 
to  one  side  or  the  other  as  the  play  went. 

"I  bet  you  they  sit  up  and  take  notice  when  I  get  go 
ing/'  Frank  advised  him. 

"What  of?"  Kenneth  honestly  wished  to  know. 

"Why  —  Me!"  Frank  was  puzzled  to  explain  himself 
in  the  face  of  such  simplicity.  He  was  to  make  himself 
felt,  to  be  feared,  respected,  fawned  upon,  another  and 
a  more  magnificent  Old  Man. 

"But  what  will  you  do  ?" 


166  THE  FORD 

"Oh,  well,"  —  offhandedly,  — "a  fellow  can  do  most 
anything  when  he  has  the  capital." 

They  let  it  go  at  that.  The  reascendancy  of  Frank's 
mind  over  his  own  had  brought  back  to  Kenneth  the  old 
sense  of  sufficiency  in  his  friend's  achievement.  He  was 
not,  however,  to  be  saved  thus  from  the  necessity  of  a 
decision. 

That  spring  the  agent  squeezed  out  the  last  remnant  of 
a  deferred  payment  from  Jevens.  The  first  the  children 
knew  of  it  was  their  father  pushing  the  little  heaps  of  bills 
across  the  table  to  them  after  supper. 

"Your  chance  in  life,  my  dear,"  he  smiled  at  Anne. 
" Yours,  Kenneth.  It's  less  than  I  hoped  to  do  for  you, 
but  I  have  made  so  little  of  my  own  chance,  I  have  come 
to  so  little  in  spite  of  all  I  hoped,  that  I  don't  feel  com 
petent  to  handle  even  this  for  you.  I  want  you  to  have 
it  to  put  into  yourselves,  instead  of  putting  it  into  prop 
erty  which  somebody  might  take  away  from  you."  He 
folded  his  hands  on  the  worn  cloth  and  smiled  at  them 
still,  but  sadly. 

" You'll  find,  son,"  he  said  a  little  later,  "that  what  is 
called  Business  consists  largely  in  taking  things  away 
from  other  people,  and  I  am  not  sure  you  are  the  kind  to 
take  them  away  successfully.  But  there's  one  condition 
I  make  with  you,  and  that  is  that  you  should  n't  begin  by 
taking  your  sister's." 

"Father!" 

"Yes,  Anne,"  taking  the  hand  which  she  thrust  between 
his  own.  "I  saw  it  in  your  face  the  moment  I  laid  the 
money  on  the  table,  that  you  were  planning  to  lend  your 
share  to  Kenneth  for  his  schooling.  Well,  that's  forbid 
den.  You're  to  understand,  Kenneth,  as  though  it  were 


THE  FORD  W7 

the  last  thing  I  had  to  say  to  you,  that  you  are  never 
under  any  circumstances  to  take  a  woman's  chance  in 
life  to  piece  out  your  own,  neither  her  heart,  nor  her  purse, 
nor  her  choice  of  an  occupation.  It 's  a  poor  sort  of  a  man 
who  can't  get  on  without  doing  that,  and  if  we  were  n't 
allowed  to  do  it  from  the  start,  we'd  find  out  how  poor 
we  are  much  sooner." 

He  showed,  at  this,  a  tendency  to  drop  into  his  accus 
tomed  melancholy;  Anne  had  her  arms  about  him,  ac 
cepting  his  terms  at  their  brightest. 

"We'll  run  a  race,  Ken  and  I,  to  see  who  gets  rich  and 
famous  the  quickest,  and  you  shall  be  umpire,  Daddy." 
She  seldom  used  the  old,  childish  term  with  him. 

In  response  to  it  he  patted  the  hands  clasped  upon  his 
breast :  "  Yes,  yes,  my  dear,  I  'm  sure  you  '11  run  bravely." 
Then  he  grew  restless,  after  his  habit,  and  rising  abruptly 
he  left  them.  They  could  hear  him  outside,  pacing  the 
veranda. 

Anne  looked  across  at  her  brother. 

"I'm  sorry,  Ken;  if  we'd  put  them  together  it  would 
get  you  through  college.  Maybe,"  with  swift  self-ab 
negation,  "you  could  manage  it  anyhow.  Father  could 
spare  you  something  from  his  salary;  when  you're  gone 
and  Addie's  gone,  I  could  do  the  work  as  easy  as  any 
thing;  we  could  take  a  smaller  house  - 

"And  of  course,"  Kenneth  scoffed,  "that  wouldn't 
be  taking  anything  out  of  you,  would  it?" 

"But,  Ken,  what  are  you  going  to  do? " 

"I  don't  know,  Anne,"  desperately;  "what '11  you 
do?" 

"Oh,"  said  Anne,  quietly  folding  up  her  bills,  "I'm 
going  to  buy  back  Palomitas." 


168  THE  FORD 

"Anne,  you'll  never  do  it  in  the  world!  With  seven 
hundred  dollars!" 

"People  have  got  rich  with  less  than  that.  Besides, 
I've  got  to.  Ken,  father  is  n't  going  to  get  any  better 
here  in  the  Mill;  he's  got  to  get  back  to  the  ground  again. 
He's  only  forty-six.  I  can't  let  him  go  like  this  .  .  .  and 
Palomitas  is  the  only  thing  that  will  cure  him."  Anne 
knew.  Then  with  a  transition  too  quick  for  him,  she 
exploded  a  suggestion  at  her  brother. 

"Ken,  why  don't  you  go  to  Mr.  Rickart?" 

Kenneth  could  n't  make  the  connection  and  said  so. 

"Well,  if  it's  like  what  father  said  —  taking  things 
away  from  people,  I  don't  know  anybody  who  does  it 
more  successfully.  And  you  know  he  always  liked  you." 

Kenneth  did  know,  and  the  idea  that  he  should  go 
simply  up  to  San  Francisco  and  demand  to  be  taught  the 
art  of  getting  things  away  from  people,  did  n't  seem  on 
the  whole  any  more  preposterous  than  Anne's  scheme  of 
buying  back  the  ranch  with  seven  hundred  dollars.  He 
had  been  stung  for  the  moment  by  his  sister's  calm  ex 
clusion  of  himself  from  that  project,  which  now  seemed 
oddly  to  shrink  to  the  sort  of  thing  a  girl  might  do. 

Thus  Anne  spurred  his  nascent  manhood,  but  it  was 
finally  to  get  away  from  Anne  and  all  she  stood  for  that 
Kenneth  went  to  San  Francisco. 

It  was  the  night  that  Addie  had  elected,  at  last,,  to  be 
married  to  the  faithful  Peters.  And  that  was  the  night 
that  the  first  rain  of  the  season  broke  in  the  hills  beyond 
Summerfield.  All  day  the  clouds  stretched  like  a  tent 
from  El  Torre  Blanco,  over  half  the  heavens.  The  Scud- 
ders,  who  drove  in  early  from  their  barren  acres,  reported 
the  dry  creek  beds  full  and  rushing  from  their  far-off 


THE  FORD  169 

fountains.  About  the  hour  Peters  should  have  been  set 
ting  out  for  his  wedding,  the  rain  reached  the  town  in 
sheets  and  quick,  wind-blown  splashes.  The  bride,  ready 
dressed,  sat  in  the  kitchen  between  her  father  and  her 
mother;  everybody  said,  of  course,  that  Peters  would  be 
there  the  moment  the  storm  permitted,  and  everybody 
knew  that  he  ought  to  have  been  there,  though  the 
heavens  descended. 

"I'll  bet  old  Peters  has  forgotten,"  Kenneth  hazarded, 
as  he  and  Anne  faced  each  other  across  the  dining-room 
table  spread  with  the  belated  wedding-supper. 

"He's  gone  round  by  the  Nacimiento  road  to  avoid  the 
river,"  Anne  was  certain. 

Things  went  on  like  this  for  an  hour.  The  minister 
telephoned  and  a  friend  of  Anne's  called  to  hear  her 
report  of  the  wedding  and  went  away  again  on  learning 
that  it  had  not  yet  taken  place.  He  was  a  longish  time 
bidding  Anne  good-bye  in  the  front  parlor,  during  which 
Kenneth  began  to  eat  the  olives  and  the  celery. 

Something  in  his  sister's  face,  perhaps,  or  in  the  oc 
casion,  pointed  his  first  question  when  she  came  back  into 
the  room  in  time  to  stop  him  from  the  sandwiches. 

"Anne,  when  you  going  to  get  married?" 

"Never."  She  was  perfectly  firm  about  it. 

"Aw  —  what's  Morse  got  to  say  to  that?" 

Morse  was  the  young  man  who  had  just  called,  he  had 
called  of  late  very  frequently. 

"Ken  .  .  .  you  never  listened!"  The  question  slipped 
from  young  Morse  unexpectedly,  "Anne,  when  are  you 
going  to  be  married,—  "  and  then,  softly, — "to  me?" 

Kenneth  convinced  her,  however,  that  his  inquiry  was 
purely  inspirational. 


170  THE  FORD 

"But  you  have  to  get  married  sometime,"  he  pro 
tested  largely.  "Girls  have  to  get  married." 

"Oh,  no,  they  don't."  Anne  was  sure  of  it.  "They 
only  have  to  when  they  have  n't  brains  enough  and  cour 
age  enough  to  get  on  without  it." 

This  was  a  facer ;  it  had  never  occurred  to  Kenneth  that 
his  sister  might  have  what  were  known  as  "views."  He 
looked  at  her  now  with  youth's  appraisement.  In  Sum- 
merfield  people  who  did  not  know  Anne,  thought  it  clever 
of  her  to  have  attached  herself  to  the  radiant  and  popu 
lar  Virginia;  but  Anne  was  not  really  unattractive,  she 
only  appeared  so  against  the  wildrose  flush,  the  dark 
tendrils  of  hair,  and  the  lovely  Irish  eyes  of  her  friend. 
Anne  had  good  teeth  and  a  clear  skin ;  her  dust-colored  hair 
lay  in  thick,  smooth,  almost  classic  bands  about  her  broad, 
full  brow,  and  at  eighteen  she  had  the  body  of  a  young 
mother,  slender  still,  but  full-bosomed  and  round-waist ed. 

"You  use  n't  to  think  that,"  Kenneth  reminded  her. 
The  recollection  of  certain  girlish  predilections  of  hers 
brought  other  things  to  his  mind.  "You  used  to  be  sweet 
enough  on  old  Frank,  too." 

"Kenneth!"  She  made  almost  to  leave  the  room,  but 
at  the  door  she  turned  on  him.  "Frank's  not  our  kind," 
she  told  him;  "he'll  marry  a  society  woman  and  that's 
the  last  we'll  see  of  him.  Anyway,"  Anne  went  on,  "I'm 
not  going  to  marry,  and  you  can  make  up  your  mind  to  it. 
.  .  .  Ken, "  —  she  had  her  back  to  the  door  and  her  hands 
upon  it,  —  "do  you  know  what  our  mother  died  of?" 

"Anne  .  .  .  Anne  .  .  .  you  shan't.  ...  I'll  not  hear 
it.  .  .  ."  Strange,  incredible  surmises  beleaguered  his  in 
telligence;  he  thrust  them  from  him  with  a  force  that  sent 
his  chair  crashing  backward.  He  leaned  both  his  hands 


THE  FORD  171 

upon  the  white  cloth  and  stared  angrily  across  the  flower- 
trimmed  table. 

Anne  was  white  and  obstinate. 

"  You  need  n't,"  she  threw  back;  "but  I  can  tell  you, 
Kenneth,  I  'm  not  going  to  tie  up  my  life  so  close  to  any 
body  that  anything  he  can  do  will  make  me  want  to  die 
rather  than  live,  and  you  'd  better  be  sure  before  you  tie  up 
that  you  can  make  a  woman's  life  worth  living  to  her  - 

She  brought  the  door  open  behind  her  with  the  vehe 
mence  of  her  protest,  and  her  words  were  drowned  in  a 
burst  of  anguish  that  rushed  upon  them  from  the  kitchen 
where  the  bride  had  suddenly  concluded  that  the  matter 
of  life  and  death,  which  she  had  been  assured  could  only 
keep  Peters  from  her,  had  actually  occurred.  "  He 's  dead 
and  drownded,"  wailed  the  unhappy  Addie.  "The  crik's 
riz  an'  carried  him  aw-ay,  an'  I  ain't  never  going  to  be 
married  at  al-11! "  It  was  amazing  to  see  Addie,  who  never 
cried,  sobbing  with  the  loud,  frank  abandon  of  a  child. 
There  was  desolation  in  her  unashamed  wail,  "I  want  to 
be  married  —  oh,  I  wa-an't  to  .  .  ." 

There  was  a  note  in  it  that  reminded  Kenneth  of  his 
mother's  "I  don't  want  to  be  poor  always."  He  was 
pierced  for  a  moment  as  by  a  thin  little  sliver  of  the 
fierce,  elemental  need  of  women.  He  was  terrified  to 
think  what  men  had  assumed  who  charged  themselves 
with  its  satisfaction.  Addie  wanted  to  be  married,  wanted 
it  as  a  man  wants  to  eat  or  to  fight .  .  .  and  Anne,  did  she, 
too,  want  something  like  that?  .  .  . 

Within  half  an  hour  Kenneth  was  charging  the  sheeted 
storm  down  the  Nacimiento  road  in  search  of  the  missing 
bridegroom.  The  wind  fronted  him  like  a  wall,  but  he 
scarcely  felt  it,  so  keen  was  his  sudden  need  of  escape  from 


172  THE  FORD 

what,  in  his  sister's  mind  and  Addie's,  threatened  the 
inviolability  of  his  personal  experience.  The  things  Anne 
must  have  been  thinking  all  this  time!  Perhaps  she  would 
marry,  though  .  .  .  girls  always  said  they  would  n't  so  as 
to  be  on  the  safe  side.  He  had  a  moment  of  quite  fiercely 
wanting  Anne  to  marry,  to  bend  her  back  .  .  .  and  then 
he  thought  of  his  mother.  .  .  .  Anne  understood  things 
about  his  mother.  .  .  .  "You  can't  do  anything,"  his 
father  had  said,  "but  it  comes  back  at  last  to  some 
woman.  .  .  .  "  The  weight  of  that  lay  on  his  mind  like 
the  stiff  mud  through  which  he  worked,  and  the  wind 
that  faced  him.  He  suffered  the  need  of  a  world  of  men. 

But  even  among  men  there  was  something.  .  .  .  Anne 
must  have  understood  that,  too,  in  her  scorn  of  mere 
work.  .  .  .  Look  at  the  way  Peters  worked  .  .  .  and  Jim 
Hand!  It  was  n't  education.  .  .  .  There  was  his  father  .  .  . 
and  there  was  Burt,  of  Burt  and  Estes,  a  man  who  for 
birth  and  breeding  could  n't  have  been  distinguished  from 
Jim  Hand,  forever  and  completely  differentiated  from 
him  by  the  inestimable  possession.  It  was  n't  money 
either  .  .  .  money  came  of  it.  He  recalled  what  he  had 
heard;  how  the  Old  Man  himself  had  come  into  Agua 
Caliente  forty  years  ago  packing  his  blankets.  But  Burt 
and  Rickart  had  escaped.  They  were  not  driven  .  .  .  not 
even  by  their  women.  .  .  .  Women  and  land  and  things 
fell  into  their  proper  relation  to  men  who  had  .  .  .  what 
was  it  they  had? 

The  Nacimiento  road  was  six  inches  under  water  in 
places,  and  the  stiff  adobe  mud  sucked  at  his  horse's 
fetlocks  as  he  rode,  but  Kenneth  scarcely  felt  it  because 
of  what  rode  beside  him  —  the  importunate  mystery  of 
escape.  ...  He  reached  up  and  along  it  like  a  palpable 


THE  FORD  173 

shape,  failing  of  its  measure.  .  .  .  "Tell  me,  I  pray,  thy 
name.  .  .  .  "  He  was  aware  of  having  uttered  the  words 
aloud,  but  he  did  not  know  from  what  crypt  of  memory 
they  were  drawn. 

It  was  half-past  eight  before  he  saw,  through  the  un 
curtained  window  of  Peters's  kitchen,  that  much-wor- 
ried-about  individual  sitting  peacefully  with  his  pipe 
before  the  stove,  shining  in  its  unsullied  bridal  blacking. 

Peters  confronted  him  in  colossal  abashment. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  you  was  expecthV  -  -  of  course 
I  knew  it  was  the  day  — " 

"Well,  what  in  thunder  —  ?" 

"Why  it  was  so  kind  of  —  damp-like.  I  thought  you 
would  n't  have  it  - 

Kenneth  leaned  against  the  door-post  and  feebly  shook 
with  laughter.  "You'll  have  to  think  up  a  better  excuse 
than  that,"  he  warned,  "or  Addie  won't  have  you.  She's 
crying  her  eyes  out.  .  .  .  Where  you  going?"  But  the 
horrified  bridegroom  had  shot  past  him  like  a  catapult. 
Addie  crying! 

The  ceremony  was  over  by  the  time  Kenneth  rode  again 
into  his  father's  yard.  The  rain  was  quite  done  and  the 
stars  were  out ;  brooding  between  earth  and  sky  the  Torr' 
showed  whitely,  touched  with  the  first  finger  of  the  snow. 
Kenneth  kissed  the  bride  halfway  to  the  gate. 

"Any  time  you  get  to  hankerin'  for  the  taste  of  my 
cookin',  you're  welcome,"  Addie  assured  him. 

"I'll  be  hankering  for  it  lots  of  times,"  he  told  her 
handsomely,  "but  I'll  have  to  do  without  it.  I'm  going 
to  San  Francisco." 

"My  land!  "said  Addie. 


II 

AND  yet,  after  six  years  of  San  Francisco,  most  of  which 
he  had  spent  in  the  character  of  confidential  clerk  to  the 
Old  Man,  Kenneth  had  to  admit  that  he  had  n't  come 
any  nearer  on  his  own  behalf  to  the  incommunicable  se 
cret  of  success.  He  had  moved  forward  with  the  Rickart 
Company  as  one  moves  on  a  ship  through  all  the  points  of 
the  financial  compass;  he  had  not,  however,  altered  the 
relative  distance  between  himself  and  the  point  in  his 
mind's  eye.  He  felt  himself  vastly  instructed  in  the  man 
ner  in  which  the  Old  Man,  being  rich,  became  richer,  but 
he  was  not,  in  any  light  that  he  could  see  the  situation, 
on  the  way  to  becoming  rich  himself. 

"You  must  put  something  into  the  game,"  Rickart 
had  told  him  on  the  day  when,  half  sick  between  shyness 
and  his  secret  sense  of  defiance  to  everything  that  Rickart 
stood  for,  Kenneth  had  come  into  his  private  office  de 
manding  direction.  "You  must  put  something  in  —  if 
you  have  n't  money,  you  can  have  knowledge  —  special 
knowledge. "  He  rolled  his  cigar  in  his  mouth  as  though 
it  were  the  quality  of  his  own  success  which  he  thus  tried 
to  formulate.  "Times,"  he  said,  "I  would  have  given  one 
of  my  eyes  for  what  Frank's  getting  at  college.  .  .  ."  He 
brought  himself  back  from  the  contemplation  of  the  one 
unconquered  world  on  his  horizon  to  the  matter  in  hand. 
"If  you  had  a  special  knowledge,  now,  of  anything  — 
such  as  the  law  —  I  could  use  you." 

On  that  hint  Kenneth  had  put  himself  to  the  law,  to 
which  he  added  stenography  and  typewriting.  This  had 


THE  FORD  175 

brought  him,  about  the  time  Frank  was  out  of  college, 
to  a  desk  in  the  outer  offices  of  the  Rickart  Company. 
There  was  no  difference  between  his  desk  and  the  one  oc 
cupied  by  Frank  on  the  other  side  of  the  door  that  swung 
into  Rickart's  private  office,  no  difference  whatever  in 
the  range  of  duties  nor  the  salaries  attached  to  them;  but 
there  was  a  difference. 

It  was  not  in  anything  which  had  sprung  up  between 
the  two  in  the  interruptions  of  their  boyish  intimacy,  for 
if  Frank  had  most  to  tell,  Kenneth  was  still  the  better 
listener.  It  was  not  in  the  occasions  made  accessible  to 
Frank  in  having,  in  addition  to  his  salary,  an  allowance 
as  his  father's  son,  for  all  their  earlier  comradery  had 
grown  out  of  just  such  differences;  nor  was  it  even  in  such 
distinctions  as  that  the  sons  of  other  rich  men  who 
drifted  into  the  Rickart  chambers,  to  sit  on  the  boys' 
desks  and  exchange  young  comment  and  badinage,  some 
how  never  included  Kenneth  in  counter-sessions  of  sit 
ting  on  their  own.  It  had  to  do,  so  far  as  Kenneth  could 
formulate  it  to  himself,  with  the  egregious  mistake  that  all 
they  at  Petrolia  had  made  about  the  Old  Man.  They 
were  all  hopelessly  and  scarifyingly  wrong  —  Soldumbe- 
here,  Jim  Hand,  and  the  settlers  of  Tierra  Longa.  They 
had  known  that  Rickart  had  ruined  them,  but  they  had 
recouped  their  self-esteem  in  the  pride  of  having  strug 
gled  with  him;  they  had  made,  in  their  small  way,  re 
prisals.  What  Kenneth  had  faced  in  the  revealing  years 
was  the  certainty  that  what  Rickart  had  done,  he  had 
done  without  thinking  of  them  at  all;  he  had  done  it  by 
his  gift  of  being  able  not  to  think  of  them. 

As  one  or  another  of  the  Rickart  enterprises  swam  into 
knowledge,  Kenneth  had  found  himself  thinking  of  them 


176  THE  FORD 

as  things  a  man  might  well  give  his  life  to,  —  the  develop 
ment  of  forest  lands  in  Lassen  County,  the  vast  reaches 
of  salt  lakes  in  Nevada,  —  and  in  the  intervals  in  which 
he  had  been  sent  east  or. south  to  examine  the  titles  of 
other  and  even  more  alluring  ventures,  he  found  that  the 
first  had  been  milked  of  their  anticipated  profits  and  laid 
aside.  Nothing  developed  far  in  the  Old  Man's  hands; 
it  paid  toll  merely  to  his  faculty  of  foreseeing  its  develop 
ment  in  a  given  direction. 

Lands,  waters,  and  minerals,  he  took  them  up  and  laid 
them  down  again,  wholly  uninformed  of  the  severances 
and  readjustments  made  necessary  by  that  temporary 
possession.  The  most  that  he  knew  of  mortgages,  over 
due  installments,  foreclosures,  were  their  legal  limitations ; 
he  did  not  know  that  men  are  warped  by  these  things  out 
of  all  manhood  and  that  women  died  of  them.  It  was  as 
if  a  huge  bite  had  been  taken  out  of  the  round  of  his 
capacity,  and  left  him  forever  and  profitably  unaware  of 
the  human  remainder. 

Kenneth  had  studied  law  because  there  was  nothing  he 
so  much  wished  as  to  be  used  by  the  Old  Man,  tempered 
by  him,  sharpened.  But  he  was  not  long  in  discovering 
that  to  T.  Rickart  a  lawyer  was  a  kind  of  compass  merely, 
by  which  he  found  his  way  about  the  devious  affairs  of 
men.  Laws  were  not  human  institutions  at  the  making 
of  which  men  prayed  and  sweated,  but  so  many  hazards 
and  hurdles  of  the  game.  He  hired  men  to  tell  him  how  to 
go  over  the  laws  and  under  them,  leaving  them  as  intact 
as  possible.  He  seldom  broke  a  law,  seldomer  took  the 
trouble  to  have  one  made  or  remade.  He  could  use  a  suit 
at  law  to  block  a  rival's  game,  but  at  best  he  regarded  it 
as  unsportsmanly.  It  was  -by  some  native  inability  to 


THE  FORD  177 

attain  this  oblivious  frame  of  mind  that  Kenneth  felt 
himself  convicted  of  failure. 

He  was  made  to  feel  it  acutely  in  the  sixth  year  by 
events  which  led  to  the  renewal  of  direct  personal  rela 
tions  with  his  sister  and  Virginia,  and  the  discovery  of 
the  extent  to  which  they  had  both  of  them  established  a 
sort  of  working  relation  with  their  environment.  From 
the  day  that  Anne  had  sent  him  up  to  the  Old  Man,  to 
receive  at  his  hands  the  sword  which  had  been  turned 
against  them  at  Petrolia,  he  had  seen  very  little  of  Vir 
ginia.  Of  that  little  he  recalled  nothing  much  but  a  vague 
sense  of  some  demand  upon  him,  to  the  nature  of  which 
he  had  never  any  very  definite  clue,  and  an  equally  vague 
and  characterless  resistance.  Her  marriage,  which  had 
occurred  within  a  year  after  the  death  of  Cornelius,  had 
been  inexplicable  except  on  the  ground  that  it  was  the 
business  of  girls  in  general  to  get  married.  She  had  an 
nounced  it  to  him  with  dramatic  suddenness  on  the  heels 
of  one  of  several  visits  which  she  had  made  that  year  to 
San  Francisco,  on  which  occasions  the  swift,  warm  rush 
of  her  personality  and  an  almost  spectacular  prettiness 
had  all  but  penetrated  his  young  stolidity  with  intima 
tions  of  a  more  spacious  existence.  It  gave  him,  to  hear 
of  her  engagement  to  Bert  Sieffert,  a  momentary  sense 
of  betrayal,  as  if  she  had  deserted  the  adventure  of  youth 
too  soon,  to  cast  anchor  in  the  locked  port  of  grown-up  ex 
perience.  After  that  he  had  seen  her  but  once  or  twice, 
making  out  very  little  except  that  Sieffert  was  objection 
able  and  prosperous,  and  that  Virginia's  manner  denied 
him  more  than  a  decorative  relation  to  her  person.  Of  her 
divorce,  which  had  come  early  in  the  second  year  with  an 
explosive  accompaniment  of  scandal,  he  had  heard  as 


178  THE  FORD 

little  as  possible.  Partly,  because  he  was  away  in  Arizona 
that  winter  on  business  of  Rickart's,  and  partly  because 
his  severe  young  maleness  revolted  against  the  free  dis 
cussion  of  the  personal  equation,  which  had  evidently 
taken  place  between  Virginia  and  his  sister. 

The  news,  then,  that  Virginia  was  about  to  return  from 
New  York  —  where  she  had  gone  to  hide  whatever  dis 
comfiture  there  had  been  for  her  in  the  necessity  of  sur 
rendering  Bert  Sieffert  to  the  superior  claims  of  her  maid 
of  all  work  —  had  less  interest  for  him  than  that  she  was 
coming  back  in  a  new  and  perfectly  defined  status  as 
an  Agitator.  Anne  brought  it,  on  one  of  those  occasions 
which  contributed  to  his  feeling  too  little  like  the  Big 
Business  man  he  had  chosen  to  be,  and  too  much  the 
younger  brother  on  a  salary.  For  Anne  was  a  business 
woman.  She  had  the  gift  of  detachment ;  she  could  buy 
land  without  wanting  to  work  it;  she  could  buy  it  with 
the  distinct  intention  of  unloading  it  on  somebody  else 
who  believed  himself  elected  to  work  it  and  was  willing 
to  pay  handsomely  for  the  privilege.  Anne  could  buy  a 
hundred  feet  of  raw  city  lot,  a  mile  from  any  point  in  par 
ticular,  and  by  the  addition  of  two  palms,  a  pomegran 
ate  bush,  and  a  cement  curbing,  dispose  of  it  as  a  choice 
residence  site.  Anne  had  taken  over  the  Larsen  ranch 
on  which  Larsen  himself  had  n't  been  able  to  raise  even 
the  mortgage,  and  sold  it  in  five  and  ten  acre  subdivi 
sions,  on  each  of  which  the  purchaser  not  only  believed 
he  could  make  a  living,  but  had  more  or  less  succeeded 
in  doing  it.  By  such  steps,  aided  and  abetted  by  Cor 
nelius,  Anne's  seven  hundred  had  easily  become  seven 
thousand.  It  had  been  the  note  to  take  in  the  circle  of 
the  family  that  Uncle  Corny  had  been  the  fountain  head 


THE  FORD  179 

of  Anne's  successes,  but  now  Cornelius  had  been  dead 
two  years  and  Anne  was  doing  business  privately  with 
Old  Man  Rickart. 

Kenneth  was  sure  of  this  because  several  times  lately 
he  had  seen  letters  go  in  to  the  Old  Man  addressed  in  his 
sister's  bold,  squarish  hand;  and  the  very  morning  on 
which  she  told  him  about  Virginia  she  had  had  a  confer 
ence  with  his  employer  in  his  private  office.  Kenneth, 
though  he  knew  no  slight  was  intended,  could  not  help 
being  a  little  hurt  —  what  business  could  she  have  that 
he  could  n't  have  managed  for  her?  It  was  part  of 
Anne's  way  of  doing  business  that  she  never  could  talk  of 
it,  not  at  least  until  it  was  well  on  the  way  to  accomplish 
ment.  She  followed  faint  clues  afar  off,  by  some  process 
that  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  ordinary  com 
mercial  astuteness;  questions,  and  the  necessity  for  justi 
fying  herself,  always  threw  her  off  the  scent,  scared  the 
quarry.  She  had  learned,  and  had  taught  her  family,  to 
pay  to  the  initial  stage  of  her  business  ventures  the  trib 
ute  of  discreet  inattention. 

So  when  she  had  been  passed,  without  any  previous 
notice  of  her  coming,  into  the  private  office,  for  a  brief 
conference  with  Rickart,  Kenneth  had  made  the  most  of 
taking  her  out  to  luncheon  before  she  caught  the  return 
train  to  Summerfield,  and  was  rewarded  with  the  piece  of 
news  about  Virginia. 

"It  is  the  labor  trouble  that's  bringing  her."  San 
Francisco  was  then  in  the  first  throes  of  the  struggle  with 
unionism.  "She's  one  of  their  paid  organizers."  Ken 
neth  made  a  little  sound  of  annoyance.  "Oh,  I've  no 
doubt  she's  good  at  it.  Virginia  could  always  make 
people  play  her  game.  Don't  you  remember?"  Anne 


180  THE  FORD 

smiled  and  finally  sighed.  "Of  course  a  woman  has  to 
have  something  to  do  .  .  .  but  I  hoped  she'd  marry 
again  .  .  ." 

"I  thought  the  trouble  was  that  she  married  in  the 
first  place.  I  never  could  see  why  she  wanted  to." 

"Well,"  —  Anne  considered,  —  "it  was  a  way  out." 

"Out  of  what?  Cornelius  was  well  fixed  — " 

"That's  just  it.  Virginia  was  too  well  fixed;  lots  of 
girls  are  like  that;  their  lives  are  padded;  marrying  is  the 
only  way  they  can  get  out  of  it  into  reality,  into  experi 
ence  ..."  Anne  fell  into  a  brown  study  as  she  did  some 
times  with  Kenneth,  trusting  him  to  follow  her  uncom 
pleted  thought,  only  to  find  at  the  end  of  it  that  they  had 
come  out  at  utterly  irreconcilable  conclusions,  as  on  this 
occasion  .  .  .  "And  then  you  would  n't  marry  her." 

"Oh,  I  say,  Anne!" 

"Not  that  she  wanted  you  to,"  Anne  conceded;  "what 
I  mean  is  that  the  sort  of  young  men  that  Virginia  ought 
to  have  married  were  all  busy  like  you,  making  a  place 
for  themselves.  They  had  n't  time  to  marry  and  they 
could  n't  afford  it.  And  there  was  Virginia  left  with  five 
or  six  of  her  best  years  .on  her  hands.  If  Uncle  Corny 
hadn't  died  just  then  .  .  .  How  it  all  holds  together!" 
she  broke  off  to  exclaim.  "  Jevens,  and  our  getting  into 
things  at  Petrolia,  and  Jim  Hand.  I  suppose  he  was 
really  the  death  of  Uncle  Corny." 

Cornelius  had  finally  died  from  a  stroke  which  had  been 
induced  by  an  old  injury  to  his  head,  though  he  had  main 
tained  to  the  last  that  he  had  never  known  how  he  came 
by  it. 

«"It  was  the  shock  that  made  him  forget,"  Kenneth 
reminded  her,  "and  I  was  the  only  person  who  ever 


THE  FORD  181 

did  know  that  it  was  Hand  who  pushed  him  into  the 
vent." 

"  And  the  loose  ends  of  it  hanging  over  into  our  lives/' 
said  Anne,  gathering  them  all  into  her  hand.  "You 
know,  we'll  owe  all  we  expect  to  get  out  of  the  Home 
stead  property  to  Bert  Sieffert." 

"I  don't  see  how  he  comes  into  it."  Bert  Sieffert  was 
the  man  Virginia  had  seen  in  the  light  of  a  Way  Out. 

"  Well  —  it  was  Jennie  Hand,  you  know,  who  —  it  was 
on  her  account  Virginia  got  her  divorce." 

" I  know  —  the  skunk!" 

"Don't  be  bitter,  Ken.  After  all,  he  did  the  only 
decent  thing  that  was  possible.  By  all  the  standards  of 
that  sort  of  people  he  did  n't  have  to  marry  her;  he  was  a 
married  man,  and  she  was  in  his  wife's  house  -  Well, 
when  Jim  reached  the  place  where  he  tried  to  trade  off 
his  Homestead  stock  for  a  quart  of  whiskey,  and  Sieffert 
got  himself  appointed  Jim's  guardian,  he  began  to  think 
it  was  a  sort  of  judgment  that  it  should  be  Jim's  daughter 
who  paid  Cornelius's  daughter  out  for  the  part  Cornelius 
had  had  in  wrecking  the  company.  Bert  Sieffert  is  n't 
exactly  the  man  you'd  pick  out  as  an  instrument  of 
Divine  Justice,  but  he  sort  of  sees  himself  that  way,  and 
it  has  steadied  him.  It  makes  a  lot  of  difference  whether 
you  think  of  yourself  as  a  plain  sinner,  or  as  part  of  the 
working-out  of  a  Plan.  It's  more  —  dignifying." 

As  far  as  a  thoroughly  nice  young  man  could  be  thought 
of  as  doing  anything  so  common,  Kenneth's  reply  could 
be  described  as  a  snort.  He  regarded  his  sister's  disposi 
tion  to  seek  for  subtle  and  invisible  relations  as  purely 
feminine  —  which  it  undoubtedly  was  —  and  as  tending 
to  destroy  the  orderly  perspective  of  human  conduct. 


182  THE  FORD 

Whatever  Cornelius  Burke  as  the  agent  of  the  Old  Man 
had  done  at  Petrolia,  was  Business,  and  for  Bert  Sieffert 
to  have  got  his  wife's  cook  with  child  was  a  Sin,  between 
which  there  was  a  great  gulf  fixed.  His  six  years  of  work 
ing  with  Rickart  had  taught  Kenneth  that  Business  was 
an  immense,  incontrovertible  Scheme  of  Things ;  as  for  the 
other,  it  was  a  simple  question  whether  a  man  was,  or  was 
not,  a  skunk.  Kenneth's  feeling  of  being  at  a  disadvan 
tage  with  Anne  in  such  discussions  kept  him  from  saying 
anything,  except  that  he  supposed  that  Virginia,  on  her 
return  from  New  York,  probably  would  n't  make  any  sort 
of  a  visit  to  Summerfield. 

" Oh,  she's  really  here  in  an  official  capacity.  Did  n't  I 
tell  you?  She's  organizing  the  women's  trade  unions. 
She  '11  go  to  Los  Angeles  and  Seattle.  If  you  have  n't 
heard  from  her  yet,  you  will.  She'll  probably  have  it  in 
for  you  for  working  for  a  Capitalistic  Pirate  like  T. 
Rickart." 

"Fat  lot  of  good  that'll  do  her! "  Kenneth  laughed,  but 
he  was  really  a  little  uneasy  in  his  mind. 

Beyond  being  pleasantly  aware  of  the  proximity  of  the 
fair  and  unmated,  young  Brent  knew  very  little  of  women. 
He  had  the  greatest  respect  and  affection  for  his  sister. 
She  had  achieved  the  hallmark  of  consideration  —  direct 
and  immediate  access  to  the  private  offices  of  T.  Rickart. 
Naturally  devoid  of  the  spirit  of  jealousy,  he  did  full 
justice  to  the  quality  of  Anne's  success,  though  he  did 
not  see  yet  that  he  should  have  to  pay  to  it  the  tribute  of 
acquiescence  in  her  social  judgments.  But  he  could  not 
argue  with  her  because  of  a  disconcerting  way  she  had  of 
basing  her  conclusions  on  the  personal  instance. 

Otherwise  he  would  have  cleared  himself,  by  talking 


THE  FORD  183 

it  over  with  Anne,  of  a  vague  sense  of  menace,  of  an  im 
pending  situation  involved  in  the  return  of  Virginia.  It 
had  its  root  in  some  potential  indelicacy  which  he  had 
realized  in  Virginia's  behaving  always,  even  during  the 
period  of  her  marriage,  exactly  as  though  she  had  not  been 
married  at  all.  Accustomed,  as  the  young  are,  to  regard 
all  relations  with  the  opposite  sex  as  the  prelude  to  ad 
venture,  Kenneth  had  felt  himself  helpless  before  Vir 
ginia's  failure  to  accept  her  marriage  as  constituting  her 
definitely  out  of  the  running.  Something  warned  him 
that  she  was  likely  to  prove  as  oblivious  to  her  status  as 
a  divorced  woman,  set  apart  by  a  scarifying,  if  unde 
served,  experience.  But  to  discuss  his  own  half-recog 
nized  trepidations  with  Anne  was  to  invite  such  rendings 
of  the  ceremonious  garments  of  sex  as  left  him  gasping. 

Much  of  what  his  father  had  said  to  him  on  that  strange 
night  after  his  mother  died,  had  passed  out  of  Kenneth's 
conscious  recollection,  but  the  impress  of  it  lay  deep 
about  the  source  of  all  his  judgments.  It  had  given  him 
to  understand  how  inevitably  all  that  men  do  impinges 
on  the  charmed  circle  of  women's  lives;  but  it  had  not 
prepared  him  to  recognize  the  disturbance  of  a  woman's 
orbit  as  arising  from  a  source  within  herself.  It  was  this 
separate  claim  for  recognition  which,  in  the  person  of  Vir 
ginia,  he  dreaded  to  meet  again;  for  he  was  instinctively 
sure  that  when  he  did  meet  her  it  would  not  be  in  the 
character  of  the  betrayed  and  repudiating  wife  of  Albert 
Sieffert,  but  as  a  human  item,  as  importunate,  as  neces 
sitous  as  himself.  And  yet,  when  he  did  see  her  at  last, 
she  made  no  such  appeal  to  him. 

Contrary  to  Anne's  surmise,  Virginia  had  not  written 
him  about  the  time  of  her  arrival,  and  it  was  not  until  the 


184  THE  FORD 

suggestion  of  menace  it  still  held  for  him  had  almost  faded 
from  his  mind  that  he  plumped  suddenly  into  her.  It  was 
one  of  those  divine  evenings  when  the  wind  comes  out  of 
the  Contra  Costa  country,  warmed  from  the  orchard 
slopes,  and  goes  walking  white-footed  on  the  Bay,  looking 
for  those  lost  Islands  "  nearest  the  terrestrial  Paradise, " 
as  the  old  tale  describes  them.  It  was  a  wind  with  a 
wandering  mood  in  it,  and  Kenneth  had  walked  from 
his  boarding-place  along  Geary  and  down  Market  with 
out  any  other  purpose  in  his  walking  than  to  meet  the 
wind's  need.  At  Grant  Avenue  he  had  paused  a  moment, 
idly  attracted  to  the  groups  gathered  in  its  open  forum 
around  the  fakirs  of  social  solutions,  who  of  late  have  suc 
ceeded  the  fakirs  of  medicinal  cure-alls  in  the  pageant  of 
the  street.  Close  to  where  he  stood,  a  bearded  anarchist 
brandished  his  red  banner  in  the  faces  of  a  few  whose 
quest  for  the  material  millennium  was  as  wistful  and  as 
futile  as  the  wind's  for  its  lost  Islands.  Farther  up,  some 
body  raucously  advertised  the  Secret  of  Vitality,  as  dis 
closed  in  the  tag  ends  of  some  obsolete  philosophy;  and 
highest  of  all,  under  the  yellow  flare  of  the  street  lamp,  half 
a  hundred  people  surrounded  a  soap  box  from  which  a 
woman's  tossed  head  and  gesticulating  arms  gave  her  the 
appearance  of  swimming  in  their  midst.  Young  Brent 
mistook  them  at  first  sight  for  suffragists,  until  his  idle 
glance  was  corrected  by  the  betraying  lack  of  yellow  pen 
nants  and  the  determinedly  belligerent  character  of  the 
audience.  As  he  looked,  it  swarmed  upon  itself  and  gave 
evidence  of  an  enthusiasm  —  whether  of  agreement  or 
dissent  he  could  not  at  that  distance  determine  —  which 
attracted  the  notice  of  a  policeman  idly  swinging  his 
night  stick  in  the  bay  of  one  of  the  shuttered  mercantile 


THE  FORD  185 

houses  opposite.  Widening  rings  of  disturbance  lapped  up 
the  outer  circle  of  anarchists  and  drew  away  devotees  of 
the  philosophy  of  Vitality  in  favor  of  the  nearest  mani 
festation  of  it.  Carried  forward  by  the  general  move 
ment  of  the  street,  Kenneth  caught,  above  the  circle  of 
excited  exclamation,  a  high,  feminine  voice  shaking  out 
bitter  denunciations  of  Capital  and  the  Established  Or 
der.  ".  .  .  Call  yourselves  Americans  .  .  .  call  yourselves 
freemen  .  .  .  miserable  wage  slaves  that  dare  n't  say  your 
souls  are  your  own  for  fear  somebody  will  dock  your  pay 
for  it!  .  .  ." 

"And  what  pay?"  The  voice  rose  again  above  the 
mingled  growl  of  corroboration  and  resentment.  ".  .  .  Is 
it  all  that  you  earn  with  your  brain  and  your  brawn  and 
your  time  ...  is  it  even  a  fair  proportion  of  what  you 
earn  .  .  .  ?  And  you  call  this  a  free  country,  and  your 
flag  the  emblem  of  liberty.  ..." 

"Aw,  g'wan,  leave  the  flag  alone,  can'tcha'!"  The  ad 
juration  which  arose  from  the  outer  circle  evoked  a  feeble 
cheer,  overmatched  by  cries  of  "Goon!  She's  right!  Shut 
up,  you!  she  ain't  said  nothing!" 

"I  tell  you  it  is  the  capitalistic  flag  of  a  capitalistic  — " 
What  followed  was  too  confused  to  make  out.  There  were 
cries  and  scuffling;  he  judged  the  speaker  had  been  pulled 
from  her  soap  box,  but  whether  by  her  friends  or  de 
tractors  he  was  not  near  enough  to  determine.  Evidently 
she  was  still  going  on  with  her  arraignment  of  the  Great 
American  Tradition;  scraps  of  injurious  phrase  floated 
clear.  By  this  time  the  policeman  had  come  up,  and 
Kenneth,  following  some  obscure  clue  of  the  voice, 
plunged  into  the  crowd  beside  him. 

"What 'sup,  officer?" 


186  THE  FORD 

"Th'  iron  workers.  They're  out."  Kenneth  recalled 
that  he  had  read  as  much  in  the  evening  papers.  "  That 's 
one  of  these  here  New  York  organizers.  .  .  .  "  The  police 
man  bunted  his  way  to  the  center.  "Make  way  there, 
make  way!"  He  squared  his  shoulders  outward  —  and 
then  through  the  triangle  of  his  arms  akimbo  Kenneth 
saw  her.  She  was  not  changed  —  she  was  scarcely 
changed  at  all!  The  gray  Irish  eyes  of  her  glowed  in  the 
flare  of  the  lamps  phosphorescently,  little  tendrils  of  hair 
blew  out  from  under  her  hat  pushed  awry  by  her  own 
vehemence.  One  of  her  hands  was  held  by  a  short,  heavy 
girl  of  an  obvious  racial  type,  and  with  the  other  Vir 
ginia  still  challenged  her  audience.  It  was  only  thus, 
close  almost  to  touching,  that  Kenneth  saw  the  point  of 
the  controversy,  for  with  the  free  hand  Virginia  shook  a 
corner  of  the  flag  that,  following  the  convention  for 
gatherings  of  that  kind,  along  with  the  emblems  of  the 
organization,  draped  the  impromptu  speaker's  stand. 

"You  call  it  the  flag  of  the  free!  Free!  .  .  .  when  you 
dare  n't  join  the  Union  and  fight  with  your  brother 
workers.  .  .  .  That  for  your  flag.  .  .  ."  She  tweaked  at  it. 
The  police  officer  caught  her  by  the  wrist.  .  .  .  "Now, 
now,  Miss." 

At  that  moment  the  stone  was  thrown.  It  caught  her 
fairly  on  the  point  of  the  shoulder. 

"Virginia!"  Kenneth  did  not  know  how  he  got  across, 
but  he  was  there  holding  the  hurt  arm  in  his  own  ...  he 
had  thrashed  fellows  at  school  for  hurting  Virginia.  .  .  . 

"Order,  order!"  bellowed  the  policeman.  He  had  had 
orders  from  headquarters  which  he  did  n't  see,  for  the  life 
of  him,  how  he  was  to  carry  out ;  from  the  edge  of  the  crowd 
he  was  met  by  the  answering  bellow  of  a  fellow  officer. 


YOU   CALL  THIS   A    FREE   COUNTRY   AND    YOUR    FLAG   THE 
EMBLEM   OF   LIBERTY 


THE  FORD  187 

"I  know  this  lady/7  Kenneth  found  himself  saying. 

"Then  get  her  away,  sir,  else  I'll  have  to  arrest  her  to 
save  her." 

"Arrest  me?  Arrest  me,  officer!"  Virginia  was  blaz 
ing. 

"Oh,  Miss  Burke,  Miss  Burke,  you've  done  all  that 
you  could  -  The  heavy  girl  tugged  at  her  arm,  "We 
can't  spare  you,  to' have  you  arrested.  .  .  ."  Between  them 
they  edged  her  out  of  the  crowd. 

"It  is  a  capitalistic  flag  .  .  ."  Virginia  insisted. 
"Ken!"  —  she  noticed  him  at  last,  —  "where  are  you 
taking  me?" 

"Home.  To  your  hotel.  Anywhere  you  like." 

"Do,  Miss  Burke,"  the  heavy  girl  urged.  "Never 
mind  about  going  on  to  the  hall;  maybe  the  police 
won't  permit  the  meeting  now.  .  .  .  You  must  save  your 
self  for  to-morrow  .  .  .  your  poor  arm!" 

Virginia  winced  at  Kenneth's  pressure  on  it;  she  stag 
gered  a  little,  sick.  "Very  well,"  she  acquiesced.  They 
walked  on  without  speaking;  the  heavy  girl  drifted  away 
from  them.  Presently  Virginia  roused  herself  to  give  a 
direction.  "No!  no!  We'll  walk."  She  shook  off  Brent's 
suggestion  of  a  car.  She  began  to  talk  again  scrappily. 
"It's  all  true,  what  I  said  .  .  .  this  isn't  a  free  country. 
We're  all  slaves  .  .  .  slaves  to  tradition  .  .  .  slaves  to  a 
system  .  .  .  and  the  wage  slaves,  they're  the  worst  of  all. 
I  Ve  been  finding  out,  Ken  ...  I  wish  that  policeman  had 
arrested  me  ...  I'd  have  told  the  judge  ..."  She  ran 
on  with  fragments  of  challenge  and  battle,  most  of  it 
unintelligible  to  Kenneth.  She  ran  down  at  last  from 
exhaustion  and  the  pain  in  her  arm.  They  made  the  last 
few  blocks  of  the  way  in  silence. 


188  THE  FORD 

All  this  time  Kenneth  had  not  been  taking  her  seri 
ously.  She  was  just  Virginia.  At  school  they  had  always 
been  pulling  Virginia  out  of  scrapes  into  which  she  had 
been  led  by  unpremeditated  partisanships  of  whoever,  on 
the  face  of  things,  appeared  to  be  getting  the  worst  of  it. 
This  time,  he  thought  she  had  really  carried  it  too  far! 
If  he  hadn't  happened  along  opportunely,  she  might 
have  got  herself  arrested.  .  .  .  Had  n't  she  had  enough  of 
being  in  the  papers.  .  .  . 

He  was  guiding  her  now  up  the  slopes  of  Geary,  and 
with  a  little  of  the  old  exasperation  which  everybody  had 
now  and  then  with  Virginia,  he  almost  shook  her.  At  the 
impatient  touch  she  gave  a  faint,  almost  imperceptible 
moan.  Reduced  by  it  to  instant  contrition,  he  followed 
her  without  protest  or  invitation  into  her  apartment. 

It  was  one  of  those  furnished  suites,  common  enough 
in  the  San  Francisco  of  the  period  immediately  preceding 
the  fire  to  have  come,  all  of  them,  out  of  the  same  shop; 
—  furniture  and  hangings  that  might,  probably  had,  be 
longed  to  just  anybody,  with  only  a  scattered  feminine 
belonging  or  two  and  a  jumble  of  papers  on  the  table 
to  signify  its  temporary  possession  by  Virginia.  Virginia 
was  not  one  of  those  women  who  give  atmosphere  to  a 
room.  She  did  not  even,  now  that  she  had  come  into  this 
one,  seem  at  home  in  it.  She  rummaged  about  in  the  ad 
joining  bedroom  and  came  back  with  a  bottle  of  witch- 
hazel  and  a  clean  handkerchief.  Kenneth  wished  now  that 
the  heavy  girl  had  come  along  with  them;  he  wondered 
where  they  had  lost  her.  But  Virginia  was  incapable  of 
embarrassment.  She  saturated  the  handkerchief  with  the 
contents  of  the  bottle  and  unbuttoning  the  neck  of  her 
shirt-waist,  thrust  it  down  to  the  bruised  spot  on  her 


THE  FORD  189 

shoulder.  She  sat  there  opposite  him  in  the  Morris  chair, 
with  the  neck  of  her  waist  open,  and  questioned  him 
about  himself,  throwing  in  items  of  personal  information 
in  which  she  seemed  to  take  for  granted  the  development 
of  her  unionizing  mission  as  within  the  range  of  his  na 
tural  interest.  She  spoke  of  the  iron  workers,  and  of  the 
Cause  as  though  it  were  some  vast,  enveloping  nexus,  of 
which  it  was  not  to  be  imagined  that  he  was  ignorant. 
She  was  to  address  the  Friends  of  Labor  to-morrow  eve 
ning  —  Kenneth  must  hear  her.  That  was  so  like  Virginia, 
to  sweep  everybody  within  reach  into  the  lap  of  her  im 
mediate  occupation.  She  conceived  him  ready  to  drop 
into  it  by  the  weight  of  his  own  experience.  Had  n't  he, 
she  demanded,  seen  for  himself  what  they  were  up  against 
there  in  Petrolia?  His  own  father  had  n't  been  able  to  do 
what  he  knew  to  be  wise,  he  had  been  driven  ...  It 
warmed  him  suddenly  to  recall  that  even  then,  regardless 
of  her  father's  affiliations,  Virginia  had  been  on  the  side 
of  Jim  Hand  and  Pop  Scudder.  Certainly  he  would  go  to 
hear  what  she  had  to  say  to  the  Friends  of  Labor. 

Virginia  was  watching  out  for  him.  The  place  was  one 
of  those  German-American  institutions  arranged  for 
dancing  and  the  performance  of  interminable  musical 
entertainments  mitigated  by  the  continuous  service  of 
beer  and  sandwiches,  inseparable  from  the  scope  and  pur 
pose  of  Turn-verein.  He  found  Virginia  in  a  kind  of  box, 
a  little  above  the  level  of  the  audience,  the  center  of  a 
knot  of  tension  that,  considering  the  figure  the  whole 
performance  cut  in  his  eyes,  was  childishly  dispropor 
tionate.  Her  arm  was  in  a  sling,  which  from  time  to  time 
in  the  stress  of  conversation  she  forgot,  and  gesticulated 
with  it  freely  until  recalled  by  a  twinge  of  pain.  As  often 


190  THE  FORD 

as  this  occurred,  it  brought  out  in  her  companions  the 
commiserating  touch,  to  which  Virginia  responded  — 
until  some  new  turn  of  the  excited  talk  claimed  her  — 
with  a  becoming  deprecation.  It  was  perfectly  genuine, 
both  the  forgetfulness  and  the  pain;  Kenneth  was  as 
certain  of  this  as  he  was  sure  of  the  feminine  response  of 
her  temperament  to  the  touch  of  martyrdom.  It  was  so 
much  a  part  of  all  that  he  recalled  of  Virginia  and  her 
faculty  for  making  everybody  play  her  game,  for  playing 
it  herself  so  absolutely,  that  he  felt  for  the  moment  ab 
surdly  out  of  it.  She  did  n't  need  him  even  for  audience. 
Or  if  she  had  any  use  for  him  at  all,  it  was  to  heighten  the 
effect  of  the  audience  she  had,  by  showing  him  how  en 
tirely  she  could  do  without  him;  an  effect  achieved  by 
introducing  the  other  speakers  of  the  evening  as  being  so 
far  outside  of  anything  he  had  attained  for  himself  that 
it  was  n't  necessary  to  explain  to  him  who  they  were  or 
what  they  stood  for. 

And  with  one  exception  he  found  that  he  did  n't  know, 
though  it  was  evident  in  the  manner  of  those  who  came 
and  went  about  the  speaker's  box,  and  the  newspaper 
men  hovering  in  the  background,  that  they  stood  high  in 
the  immediate  expectation.  The  exception  was  the  of 
ficial  organizer  whose  name  no  moderate  assimilator  of 
news  could  have  avoided,  any  more  than  he  could  avoid 
an  eye  acquaintance  with  Spriggler's  chewing  gum  and 
Gibraltar  insurance.  He  was  a  large-built,  easy-moving 
man  whose  pure  Anglo-Saxon  profile  was  blunted,  as  were 
all  the  contours  of  his  loose  figure,  by  a  soft,  blond  fat 
ness,  and  suffered  the  further  identification  of  having  one 
eye  missing.  It  was  a  touch,  not  so  much  of  disfigurement 
as  of  deliberate  mystification,  as  of  a  house  in  which  one 


THE  FORD  191 

window  has  been  left  open  for  looking  out  and  the  other 
carefully  blinded  against  the  possibility  of  anybody  look 
ing  in.  You  had  to  be  in,  Kenneth  decided,  before  you 
could  take  any  measure  of  the  man  or  his  place  in  the 
movement  from  which  Brent's  attention  was  continually 
sliding  away  as  from  the  smooth  face  of  some  great  na 
tural  promontory,  for  want  of  anything  he  could  intel 
ligently  take  hold  upon.  It  rested  longer  on  a  paler  type 
of  man  whose  name  preceded  the  great  organizer's  on 
the  programme,  hovering  about  some  elusive  suggestion 
of  resemblance  which  did  not  define  itself  until  the  man 
began  to  speak.  Then  it  grew  upon  Kenneth  as  a  likeness 
to  Pop  Scudder,  the  temperamental  Pioneer  of  social 
revolution,  far  fixed  upon  the  ultimate  triumph,  and  suf 
fering  incredible  immediate  defeat.  Around  these  and 
Virginia  spread  an  atmosphere  of  momentous  occasions, 
much  more  momentous  than  seemed  justified  by  any 
thing  that  Kenneth  knew  of  the  situation.  It  spread  from 
them  and  enveloped  the  whole  audience. 

It  was  the  audience  —  two  or  three  hundred  working- 
men  and  their  wives  filling  the  body  of  the  hall  —  that 
lifted  the  hackles  of  that  deep-seated  sense  of  caste  that 
is  in  every  man.  Kenneth  could  feel  his  soul,  sniffing  the 
wind  tainted  by  ineradicable  difference  of  type,  answer  to 
the  old  savage  instinct  to  protect  his  own  by  discrediting 
the  unknown,  the  unconformable.  He  was  identifying 
them  by  all  the  marks  of  Jim  Hand  and  Scudder  and  Sol- 
dumbehere  as  duffers  at  the  game,  men  who  took  their 
count  from  the  Old  Man  as  at  Tierra  Longa  they  reck 
oned  distance  from  the  Torr',  a  kind  of  fluid  human  ele 
ment,  by  its  gelid  movement  at  times  retarding  the  sweep 
of  his  enterprises,  but  upon  the  surface  of  which,  if  it 


192  THE  FORD 

once  became  solidified  into  Class,  he  might  glide  the  more 
securely. 

Kenneth  fortified  himself  in  this  soundly  American 
objection  to  solidification  by  Unionism,  throughout  the 
first  part  of  the  programme,  during  which  Pop  Scudder's 
intellectual  prototype  preempted  and  abandoned  one 
after  another  of  the  open  ranges  of  social  speculation.  He 
was  able,  even  when  the  one-eyed  organizer  stood  up 
amid  a  storm  of  applause,  to  see  in  him  a  symbol  of  the 
half-blind  social  struggle,  putting  the  larger  interest  of 
the  audience  as  men  in  peril  to  their  immediate  concern 
as  workers.  And  then,  imperceptibly  but  swiftly,  some 
thing  happened.  It  was  n't  altogether  in  what  the  man 
said.  He  was  talking  easily  and  consecutively,  like  the 
steady  pouring  of  water  in  the  race;  but  over  his  audience 
as  he  talked  came  that  kind  of  aliveness  as  of  a  perfectly 
contrived  machine  working;  slight  creakings,  the  stir  of 
wheel,  the  tightening  here  and  there  of  band  and  pulley. 
It  lifted  and  lightened  somehow;  the  fluent  drops  had 
run  together,  and  out  of  it  had  come,  not  mere  Mass,  but 
a  Thing,  instinct,  awakened.  It  was  impossible  for  Ken 
neth  to  trace  in  the  steady  trickle  of  incident  and  citation 
the  force  that  had  set  it  in  motion  —  in  Idaho  mine 
workers  had  lain  down  for  nine  desperate  weeks,  and 
risen  to  an  eight-hour  day  and  time  and  a  half  for  over 
time.  .  .  .  Garment  workers  in  Chicago  had  won  a  fifty- 
hour  week.  .  .  .  Scrub  women  in  an  Atlantic  seaboard 
town  had  gone  out  at  five  dollars  a  week  and  come  in 
at  six  dollars  and  fifty  cents.  .  .  .  Four  thousand  men 
cutters  in  Indianapolis  .  .  .  ten  thousand  packing  hands 
in  Detroit  .  .  .  little  groups  here  and  there  .  .  .  and  how 
slight  the  gains!  The  price  that  young  Brent  paid  for  a 


THE  FORD  193 

luncheon  added  to  a  week's  wage  after  a  three  weeks' 
fight  .  .  .  riots  .  .  .  bloodshed  even!  The  pitiful  littleness 
of  it  all,  and  the  inconceivable  tenacity  .  .  .  inching  — 
inching.  The  way  the  audience  took  it  ...  drinking  it 
in,  ...  nostrils  widened,  breath  tightened  .  .  . 

Kenneth  had  a  moment  of  terror  over  it  —  did  the 
Old  Man  know  .  .  .  did  anybody  know  what  was  to  come 
out  of  all  this?  And  then  swift  on  the  fluent  moment 
came  Virginia.  She  flashed  on  them  like  some  bird  of 
plumage;  she  beckoned,  fled,  and  eluded  them  down 
unpathed  confidences,  resentments,  resolutions  .  .  .  the 
Ark  of  Promise  went  over  Jordan  before  her  —  she  danced 
with  cymbals  .  .  . 


Ill 

BUT  it  was  not  until  he  was  telling  Frank  about  it  next 
morning  that  Kenneth  thought  of  Virginia  as  the  di 
vorced  wife  of  Bert  Sieffert.  Frank  thought  of  it  first. 
He  rather  sensed  a  connection  between  the  two  circum 
stances.  That  was  a  tune  in  America  when  young  men 
were  beginning  to  talk  portentously  —  the  younger  the 
more  portentous  —  about  what  was  likely  to  happen  if 
somebody  somewhere  did  n't  put  a  firm,  restraining  hand 
on  women.  Virginia  was  a  case  in  point.  First  divorce, 
then  labor  unions,  and  insulting  the  flag.  That  was  what 
they  came  to.  Not  that  he  blamed  Virginia  for  divorcing 
Sieffert,  —  though  he  did  n't  suppose  Sieffert  had  done 
any  more  than  lots  of  men,  whose  wives  are  able  to  put 
up  with  it,  —  but  he  held  to  the  general  proposition  that 
divorce  was  bad  for  women.  It  gave  them  a  sense  of  being 
free  to  do  am/thing! 

And  as  for  all  this  talk  of  liberty  —  well,  look  at  the 
labor  unions  themselves!  Of  course  a  man  had  a  right 
to  belong  to  a  union  —  but  how  about  coercing  others? 
Look  at  what  was  in  the  morning  papers  about  riots  be 
tween  pickets  and  strike-breakers.  Frank's  view  was  the 
lineal  descendant  of  his  father's,  that  labor  agitations 
were  no  more  than  the  bubbling  of  the  pot.  If  fortunes 
were  to  be  cooked  up,  there  must  be  bubbling,  and  oc 
casionally  pots  boiled  over.  A  certain  amount  of  cussing 
must  be  allowed  to  the  fellows  who  lost  out ;  cussing  was 
a  form  of  consolation.  Still,  Frank  could  n't  hold  with 
destruction  of  property. 


THE  FORD  195 

This  was  a  point  of  view  to  which  Kenneth  had  been 
officially  adopted  in  coming  into  the  Old  Man's  employ 
ment;  but  the  consciousness  of  a  secret  infidelity,  to 
which  items  of  his  own  experience  continually  bore  wit 
ness,  kept  him  from  offering  any  opposition  to  Frank's 
argument. 

He  broke  the  thread  of  it,  however,  with  a  pleasant  ex 
citement,  derived  from  the  reading  of  his  Summerfield 
letters. 

" Anne's  coming;  be  here  over  Sunday." 

"Oh,  bully!"  Frank  was  always  loudly  pleased  with 
Anne's  short  and  infrequent  visits.  "I'll  get  some  tickets 
to  the  opera."  That  was  all  right,  of  course,  —  it  was 
Frank's  city,  and  the  Brents  had  long  conceded  him  the 
right  of  playing  host  in  it,  —  but  Kenneth  wished  his 
friend  would  remember  that  Anne  was  his  and  not 
Frank's  sister.  .  .  .  The  elder  Rickart  appeared  a  mo 
ment  at  the  door  of  his  private  office.  "Your  sister,"  he 
said,  "when  she  comes,  she's  to  be  shown  in  here  im 
mediately."  This  time  Anne  must  really  have  turned  a 
trick. 

Anne  arrived  on  Saturday.  Young  and  pleasant  she 
looked  in  her  tailored  dress  and  a  hat  of  unmistakable 
Summerfield  extraction.  She  had  the  clear,  warm  flush 
that  goes  often  with  thick,  colorless  hair;  her  eyes  were 
steady  above  a  mobile  mouth;  her  breasts  were  as  high 
and  firm  as  Hebe's.  Had  she  known  how  she  might  have 
been  beautiful;  a  little  more  modeling,  the  touch  of  a 
sharpened  chisel  ...  as  it  was  she  was  distinctly  nice 
looking.  Sitting  happily  between  the  two  young  men, 
going  up  in  the  Rickarts'  car,  Frank  put  his  hand  over 
hers  and  gave  it  a  public  and  unaffected  squeeze. 


196  THE  FORD 

"Look  here,  Anne,  what  are  you  up  to?" 

"Oh,"  she  laughed,  "I  knew  I  shouldn't  be  able  to 
keep  it ;  I  've  bought  back  Palomitas ! "  Frank  gave  one  of 
his  accustomed  whoops  —  "That  is,  of  course,  if  I  can 
make  terms  with  your  father." 

Kenneth  felt  himself  paling  with  the  sudden  clutch 
of  memory  and  —  what  was  it  —  something  like  relief  ? 
Anne  and  his  father  back  at  Palomitas  .  .  .  suppose  they 
should  need  him!  And  then  he  hid  the  emotion  from  him 
self;  he  had  recognized  it  as  a  throb  of  his  constitutional 
weakness  for  thinking  more  of  what  could  be  put  into  a 
piece  of  land  than  of  what  could  be  made  out  of  it.  He  was 
a  business  man  by  his  own  election;  still  he  could  not  re 
strain  a  certain  trepidation  of  the  spirit  as  Anne  went  in 
alone  to  her  conference  with  his  employer. 

"It's  all  arranged,"  she  told  him  briskly.  "Jevens  is 
to  take  the  Homestead  stock  for  his  first  payment.  I  've 
enough  coming  from  the  Larsen  property  for  the  next. 
All  I  want  is  that  you  should  take  over  the  original  mort 
gage." 

In  Rickart's  eyes  a  little  twinkle  of  entertainment 
struggled  with  his  habitual  business  steelness. 

"You  mean  to  work  the  ranch?" 

"To  live  there.  I'm  no  rancher.  Father '11  work  it. 
Father  has  —  come  back."  She  hesitated  over  the 
phrase.  "You  knew,  after  my  mother's  death  and  — 
everything,  father  was  n't  quite  himself  for  several  years, 
but  he  is  all  right  now;  he  has  —  come  back."  She  found, 
after  all,  nothing  else  so  expressive. 

"You've  brought  him  back." 

"It  was  the  land  that  did  it;  first  the  little  plantings 
around  the  city  properties;  and  then  he  laid  out  the 


THE  FORD  197 

Larsen  ranch  for  me,  so  that  I  knew  just  what  every 
piece  of  it  would  do  for  the  owner.  You  know  how  father 
is  about  land?' '  He  nodded.  " And  all  those  people  over 
in  Summerfield,  they  're  building  and  setting  out  orchards ; 
somebody  has  to  feed  them  -  '  She  went  on  outlining 
her  plans,  shaping  them  to  something  still  unconsenting 
in  his  eyes. 

"Are  you  taking  it  all  back?  All  that  dry  land  below 
the  Ridge  —  there  must  be  a  thousand  acres  of  it."  He 
had  put  his  cigar  back  in  his  mouth  and  it  traveled  the 
&rc  of  anxiety  as  he  waited  her  answer. 

"We  had  to.  I  know  there's  hardly  more  feed  on  it 
than  will  pay  the  taxes;  but  I  think  Jevens  has  shown  us 
the  way  to  deal  with  that." 

"Ah,"  he  cried,  "you're  not  bitten  with  that?  You're 
not  going  on  with  that  fool  craze  of  his  about  finding  oil 
there?" 

"Better  than  that,"  Anne  triumphed,  —  "water! 
'Nacio  Romero  tells  me  there's  water  standing  in  Jevens's 
old  borings.  Last  season  it  scarcely  fell  a  foot,  dry  as  the 
season  was.  I  could  put  in  a  pump  later."  She  went  on 
with  that  for  a  moment  and  came  back  to  the  flat  lands 
below  the  Ridge.  "Father  always  said  that  when  the 
people  of  Tierra  Longa  got  together  and  put  in  a  storage 
dam  on  the  river,  that  land  below  the  Ridge  would  be  his 
best  property." 

"You  tell  your  father  to  leave  dreaming  to  the  next 
generation  and  to  stick  to  his  muttons  and  alfalfa."  He 
ruminated  while  his  cigar  described  the  curve  of  per 
plexity,  and  then  he  said,  with  more  gravity  than  he  had 
yet  shown,  "You're  not  counting  on  anything  of  that 
kind  to  make  the  place  pay,  are  you?" 


198  THE  FORD 

"Dear,  no,"  cried  Anne.  "There's  all  those  orchards 
at  Summerfield  to  be  fed,"  —  she  was  brimming  with 
projects,  —  "we've  our  work  cut  out  for  us  for  six  or 
seven  years." 

"  Ah,  I  Ve  no  doubt  you  '11  be  equal  to  it,  my  dear. ' '  He 
seemed  relieved. 

"Then  you  will  take  on  the  mortgage?" 

"Oh,  that,  of  course."  He  reached  for  the  bell  to  call 
his  stenographer,  and  thought  better  of  it.  "Tell  Ken 
what  you  want  and  say  that  I  said  he  was  to  fix  it  up  for 
you." 

He  walked  away  from  her  and  for  a  moment  stood  star 
ing  out  of  the  window  at  the  huddled  lower  roofs  and 
across  the  silent  stretch  of  the  Bay,  before  he  turned  with 
a  final  warning.  "You  stick  to  your  muttons.  The 
water-owners  of  Tierra  Longa  are  n't  ever  going  to  get 
together." 

Anne's  steady  eyes  traveled  for  a  moment  across  his 
stiffened  countenance,  but  the  light  of  success  was  on 
hers  as  she  went  out  a  little  later  to  join  Kenneth  at 
luncheon. 

The  likeness  between  brother  and  sister  came  out 
strongly  as  they  sat  across  the  table  from  each  other; 
Ken's  face  was  narrower,  less  full  about  the  brows;  but 
there  were  the  same  eyes,  the  same  mobile  lips  not  yet 
shaped  by  the  compelling  stroke  of  fortune.  It  came  out 
also  how  much  older  Anne  was,  as  women  are  often 
older  than  men  of  about  the  same  years.  They  were  full 
of  the  project  of  rebuilding  Palomitas,  and  of  reminis 
cence. 

"What's  The  Company  doing  in  Tierra  Longa?"  she 
wished  to  know. 


THE  FORD  199 

Why  should  she  suppose  they  were  doing  anything, 
Kenneth  in  his  turn  demanded. 

"  Because  Mr.  Rickart  was  so  sure  there  would  n't  be 
anything  doing.7'  There  was  always  a  marvel  in  Anne's 
dealing  with  Rickart.  She  dared  much,  asked  for  what 
she  wanted  and  generally  got  it,  liked  him  immensely  and 
never  trusted  him.  "He  warned  me  twice  not  to  expect 
anything  but  sheep  and  alfalfa." 

"Are  you  expecting  anything?" 

" Naturally.  I'm  a  real-estate  agent,  Ken.  I  am  one 
the  same  way  other  people  are  musicians  and  writers. 
I'm  making  money  at  it  because  I'm  a  success;  but  I'm 
being  it  because  I  like  it.  Land  does  n't  mean  crops  to 
me  the  way  it  does  to  you  and  father,  it  means  people  - 
people  who  want  land  and  are  fitted  for  the  land,  and 
the  land  wants  —  how  it  wants  them !  I  'm  going  back  to 
Palomitas  partly  on  account  of  father,  and  partly  be 
cause  it  is  the  biggest  opportunity  I  see  to  bring  land 
and  people  together.  I  mean  to  have  a  hand  in  it." 

"  You  mean  father's  old  plan,  about  storing  the  water 
in  Tierra  Rondo  for  irrigation;  you're  never  going  to 
undertake  that?" 

"I  expect  to  see  it  undertaken.  I  don't  care  by  whom; 
it  might  easily  be  a  government  project.  You  know  it's 
been  recommended  to  the  Department.  It  might  be  Mr. 
Rickart.  He  warned  me  twice  not  to  think  of  it ;  does  that 
mean,  by  any  chance,  that  he's  thinking  of  it?"  Anne 
considered,  tapping  the  cloth  with  her  white  fingers.  It 
was  a  movement  that  reminded  Kenneth  of  their  mother 
—  so  many  little  ways  of  hers  Anne  had.  "I'd  like  to  do 
a  big  job  once,  with  a  man  .  .  .  and  it  is  a  Big  Job,  Ken 
.  .  .  thousands  of  acres  simply  crying  aloud  for  men!" 


200  THE  FORD 

"  You're  bitten,  too,  same  as  father !" 

But  Anne  was  not  to  be  put  down;  it  was  her  day  and 
Kenneth  was  too  good  a  brother  to  begrudge  it  to  her.  He 
laughed  and  was  thrilled  as  she  swung  into  full  exposition 
of  her  plans.  She  was  to  be,  she  declared,  not  an  agent  who 
sat  in  the  office  and  waited  for  people  to  come  to  her 
looking  for  land,  but  she  was  an  agent  for  the  land  who 
went  abroad  looking  for  the  right  people  to  put  to  it.  Over 
in  Summerfield,  where  she  still  had  interests,  they  sold  you 
land  as  they  sold  calico ;  they  cut  off  the  pieces  you  selected 
and  you  had  to  put  three  or  four  years  into  it  before  you 
found  out  if  it  would  wash.  They  sold  you  land,  no  mat 
ter  what  you  said  you  might  want  it  for,  and  if  you  wanted 
it  for  a  vineyard  and  it  turned  out  six  or  seven  years  later 
to  be  suited  only  for  corn,  that  was  your  lookout.  But 
every  plot  of  ground  that  passed  through  the  office  of 
Steven  Brent's  daughter  had  been  put  to  question ;  a  neat 
little  analysis  of  soil  constituents  and  subsoil  and  drain 
age  went  with  the  deed  to  it,  and  a  summary  of  the  things 
that  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  thrive  on  it.  It 
irked  Anne  exceedingly  that  she  could  n't  put  her  clients 
through  the  same  process.  Many  a  man  fancied  himself  a 
vine-  grower,  whereas  he  had  been  equipped  by  nature  for 
general  cropping.  It  took  a  certain  sort  of  temperament 
to  make  an  orchardist. 

So  Anne  expounded  her  theory  of  real  estate  as  a  liberal 
profession,  and  Kenneth  thought  how  clever  and  whole 
some  she  was,  and  wondered  why  life  was  so  much  simpler 
for  women  than  for  men.  Suddenly  reminded,  he  began 
for  his  part  to  tell  her  about  Virginia. 

"Oh,  she's  all  right!"  he  said  in  answer  to  Anne's  par 
ticular  question.  "She's  a  crackerjack  of  an  Agitator." 


THE  FORD  201 

This  was  his  way  of  saying  that  he  had  forgiven  her  for 
being  the  divorced  wife  of  Bert  Sieffert.  It  expressed,  too, 
something  of  his  relief  at  the  absence  of  all  personal  appeal 
in  her  vivid  invitation  to  walk  in  the  path  she  had  blazed 
for  him.  Virginia's  invitations  had  a  way  of  leading  to 
Virginia.  If  in  this  case  it  was  to  prove  only  a  longer  way 
around,  at  least  he  absolved  her  from  complicity.  "  You 
wouldn't  know  she'd  ever  been  married  —  or  anything," 
he  finished. 

"Oh,  well,  Virginia  wasn't  ever  married,  really," 
Anne  declared;  "you  only  think  she  was  because  of  such 
obvious  things  as  having  a  ceremony  said  over  her  and 
living  with  Bert  Sieffert.  But  the  only  thing  that  really 
counts  with  a  woman  is  her  heart  and  her  mind.  If  a  man 
can't  get  those  he  does  n't  get  very  much  of  her." 

Ordinarily  this  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  Kenneth 
found  it  very  difficult  to  accept  from  Anne.  For  Ken 
neth's  failure  to  find  the  industrial  world  the  simple  com 
bination  of  men  and  jobs  he  had  supposed  it,  had  not  in 
the  least  prepared  him  to  accept  the  refusal  of  his  per 
sonal  world  to  fall  into  an  orderly  perspective  of  marriage 
and  children  and  housekeeping. 

He  had  accepted  the  chafing  of  the  working  classes 
along  the  coasts  of  the  Old  Man's  enterprises  as  one  ac 
cepts  the  movements  of  encroaching  tide;  he  had  even 
moments  of  anticipatory  thrill  as  to  whether  it  might  not 
yet  rise  and  engulf  the  Old  Man  and  all  his  affairs.  But 
it  still  irked  him  to  find  the  women  of  his  circle  range 
themselves  with  the  increasing  number  who  did  not  fit 
into  a  perfect  feminine  perspective.  Now,  beside  his 
sister's  cold  refusal  of  her  own  place  in  the  picture,  Vir 
ginia's  attempt  to  secure  for  herself  the  traditional  evalua- 


THE  FORD 

tion  began  to  show  warm  streaks  and  flushes  of  femi 
ninity. 

Anne's  version  of  her  friend's  marriage,  as  an  affair  in 
which  only  the  surface  of  her  attention  had  been  en 
gaged,  did  much  to  restore  Virginia  to  their  ancient  right 
of  fealty  and  entertainment. 

What  Sieffert  had  wanted  from  marriage  was  not  clear, 
perhaps  the  sort  of  thing  for  which  he  had  turned  to  the 
housemaid;  but  in  the  light  of  Anne's  handling  of  her  ex 
periment  in  matrimony,  Kenneth  could  read  into  Vir 
ginia's  attempt  to  pass  through  marriage  into  the  flame 
and  fervor  of  life,  something  of  the  same  gallantry  with 
which  she  had  won  recognition  from  the  embattled  indus 
trial  forces.  All  this  was  a  great  deal  to  pass  through  the 
mind  of  a  young  man  between  the  coffee  and  the  salad. 
He  found  it  pass  too  rapidly  for  articulation.  In  the  mean 
time  Anne  was  thoughtfully  creasing  the  tablecloth. 

"If  anything  comes  up  in  regard  to  development  at 
Tierra  Longa,  you  must  be  sure  to  tell  me,"  she  re 
minded  him. 

While  he  was  dressing  for  the  opera  that  night,  it  oc 
curred  to  Kenneth  that  he  ought  to  have  suggested  to  his 
sister  that  the  occasion  was  one  that  called  for  evening 
dress.  He  was  getting  himself  into  the  dress  suit  he  had 
acquired  the  winter  before  when  he  had  spent  some  weeks 
in  Washington  with  the  Old  Man,  ostensibly  as  his  travel 
ing  secretary,  but  really  to  snoop  about  the  Land  Office  in 
the  interest  of  certain  timber  titles,  and  he  reproached 
himself  now  that  he  had  n't  given  Anne  a  hint  as  to  just 
what  was  implied  in  Frank's  change  —  after  hearing  of 
Palomitas  —  from  seats  for  "Don  Giovanni"  to  a  box. 

Kenneth  had  &ever  been  taken  into  Frank's  social 


THE  FORD  203 

circle,  had  never  expected  it;  but  he  recalled  that  the 
relations  of  the  two  families  in  Tierra  Longa  had  been 
that  of  neighbors,  and  the  return  of  the  Brents  as  pro 
prietors  would  make  a  difference  in  the  way  in  which  they 
would  be  met  by  friends  of  the  Rickarts  at  Agua  Caliente. 
He  need  not,  however,  have  concerned  himself.  Anne 
was  in  evening  dress. 

Undoubtedly  of  Summerfield  origin,  but  of  a  cut  that 
suggested  that  Anne  herself  was  not  oblivious  to  the 
value  of  high,  young  breasts  and  delicately  turned  arms 
...  oh,  undoubtedly  for  evening.  And  withal,  some 
thing  that  with  all  her  flagrant  prettiness  Virginia  subtly 
missed.  Kenneth  could  not  say  what  it  was  exactly;  he 
supposed  it  might  be  the  thing  his  mother  had  so  wished 
for  them,  and  he  thought  with  a  pang  how  strange  it  was 
that  their  going  back  to  Palomitas  should  be  the  occasion 
of  Anne's  coming  into  what  Mrs.  Brent  had  always  felt 
Palomitas  had  stood  in  the  way  of  her  getting. 

Virginia  had  not  been  invited.  It  had  been  in  Ken 
neth's  mind  once  or  twice  to  hint  that  she  should  be,  but 
an  obscure  sense  of  social  fitness  overcame  him,  and 
neither  Frank  nor  Anne  seemed  to  think  of  it.  Kenneth 
had  always  taken  his  cue  from  those  two,  and  now  to 
find  himself  ranged  with  them  in  a  social  order  from 
which  Virginia's  situation,  as  a  divorced  woman  who  had 
become  an  Agitator,  excluded  her,  gave  him  an  odd  sense 
of  security.  It  was  true  he  had  seen  a  great  deal  of  Vir 
ginia  since  her  return,  at  her  lodgings  and  at  meetings 
where  he  had  gone  by  her  invitation.  For  ever  since  that 
first  occasion,  he  had  been  touched  with  that  flame  than 
which  there  is  no  passion  more  biting,  the  passion  for  the 
people.  And  he  came  back  for  more  of  it.  He  kept  com- 


204  THE  FORD 

ing,  even  though  at  first  he  found  it  constantly  flickering 
out  in  that  curious  hair-lifting  aversion  which  the  sight 
of  massed  differences  in  men  excites  in  us.  Always  coming 
and  going,  Kenneth  thought  of  the  audience  as  muddlers 
and  duffers,  but  he  continued  to  go  because  now  and  then 
in  their  midst  he  would  be  mysteriously  touched  with 
fire.  He  could  never  reason  the  thing  out,  but  all  at  once 
he  would  Know.  The  invisible  wrestling  Angel  would 
brush  him  with  its  wings.  And  because  that  knowledge 
is  the  most  precious  of  all  the  kinds  of  knowing  that 
comes  to  men,  he  went  to  look  for  it  again  and  again. 

It  was  Virginia  who  explained  to  him,  after  he  had  ven 
tured  to  speak  of  it  to  her,  that  what  he  suffered  from  was 
Class  Consciousness.  It  was  the  way  with  Virginia  and 
her  friends  that  all  the  homely  processes  by  which  men 
live  had  become  transmuted  into  phrases,  honorific  or 
defamatory  according  as  they  crossed  some  mysterious 
frontier  of  the  mind.  Class  Consciousness  was  one,  and 
Private  Monopoly,  Unearned  Increment,  Economic  De 
terminism.  They  were  always  handing  these  about,  tak 
ing  little  nibbles  as  if  the  mere  naming  of  them  satisfied  — 
fed  or  drugged  —  that  gnawing  desire  to  know,  to  find 
Order  and  Direction.  Kenneth  was  always  doubtful  if  he 
knew  what  these  meant,  even  after  Virginia's  friend  had 
taken  him  in  hand;  lent  him  books  to  read,  Kropotkin, 
and  "  Progress  and  Poverty. "  For  always  the  explana 
tions  snagged  on  that  curious  mistake  they  made  about 
T.  Rickart  and  his  kind.  They  spoke  of  the  Cause  in  the 
terms  of  personal  conflict,  employed  against  employer, 
rich  against  poor,  labor  against  capital.  And  always  it 
stuck  in  Kenneth's  mind  that  the  real  issue  was  not  in 
the  points  at  which  they  were  in  direct  conflict,  but  in 


THE  FORD  205 

the  greater  number  in  which  they  did  not  come  together 
at  all,  in  the  fact  that  so  much  of  the  Old  Man's  game 
could  go  forward  without  any  necessity  of  his  thinking 
of  them. 

Fortified  by  his  sister's  easy  acceptance  of  the  social 
formula,  Kenneth  felt  himself  no  longer  suspended  be 
tween  two  issues  that  never  met,  but  for  the  moment  at 
least  reclaimed  to  the  Rickart  party.  His  particular 
problems  restated  themselves  under  such  obvious  solu 
tions  as  that  his  mother's  death  had  been  incident  to  his 
father's  temporary  embarrassment,  that  Virginia  had 
married  a  skunk,  and  that  by  the  Right  Man  Anne  might 
be  rescued  from  perversity.  Before  yielding  himself 
wholly  to  the  music,  he  gave  to  Virginia  a  regretful  mo 
ment,  for  her  being  so  completely  out  of  it,  and  then  the 
opening  strains  of  "Don  Giovanni"  took  his  imagina 
tion. 

Anne  returned  to  Summerfield  Sunday  night  without 
having  said  anything  to  disturb  his  pleasant  compla 
cency,  and  on  Monday  morning  the  Old  Man  paused 
at  Kenneth's  desk  long  enough  to  dictate  the  details  of 
the  Palomitas  mortgage.  "Better  make  an  abstract  of 
the  title,"  he  suggested.  "I  doubt  if  there  is  one."  He 
hesitated  a  moment  tapping  the  desk  top  with  his  broad 
ened  fingers.  "And  while  you  are  about  it,"  he  finished, 
"I  wish  you  would  look  up  all  the  water  titles  in  the  val 
ley.  It  might  come  in  handy." 


IV 

AT  the  time  when  it  was  agreed  on  all  sides  that  Vir 
ginia's  expeditionary  force  should,  in  the  interests  of  the 
Cause,  become  a  party  of  occupation,  there  was  a  little 
hollow  of  the  city  shored  up  between  Portsmouth  Square 
and  the  Barbary  Coast,  a  veritable  cove  of  adventure 
into  which  all  manner  of  unchartered  craft  might  run. 
That  lovely  galleon  which  has  been  caught  in  bronze  and 
beached  halfway  up  the  hill  of  the  Square,  had  once  put 
in  there  with  R.  L.  S.  aboard  her,  and  there  is  scarcely 
any  literary  port  of  the  world  in  which  there  is  not  at 
least  one  great  name  whose  sails  have  filled  to  its  inspir 
iting  winds  and  about  whose  hull  still  show  watermarks 
of  its  financial  ebbs  and  floods.  There,  at  the  end  of  a 
week  or  two,  Virginia  moved  and  established  herself,  in 
a  studio  which  had  lately  been  surrendered  by  a  young 
painter  and  his  wife  in  one  of  those  temporary  reversals  to 
which  the  sort  of  business  carried  on  in  studios  is  more 
than  ordinarily  liable. 

There  was  no  reason  why  Cornelius  Burke's  daughter 
should  n't  have  done  herself  very  well  in  the  matter  of 
lodging,  or,  if  she  had,  as  she  said,  wanted  background, 
why  she  should  n't  have  found  something  better  suited 
to  the  part  for  which  she  had  cast  herself  as  the  Friend 
of  Labor,  five  or  six  streets  over  in  the  heart  of  San  Fran 
cisco's  Little  Italy.  To  young  Brent,  to  whom  it  cannot 
be  denied  the  Cove  was  tainted  with  the  faint  savor  of 
decay  from  strange  hulks  and  unseaworthy  gifts,  that, 
barnacled  by  undigested  truth  and  half  guesses,  rode  at 


THE  FORD  207 

anchor  there,  the  studio  was  an  affectation.  For  he  had 
not  yet  located  her  immediate  audience,  was  near,  in  the 
relief  of  finding  himself  unaccountably  excused  from  that 
category,  to  forgetting  that  for  Virginia  there  had  al 
ways  to  be  a  particular  audience. 

But  once  he  had  climbed  the  breakneck  staircase  to 
her  top-lighted  loft,  he  found  that,  whether  or  not  it  was 
the  sort  of  background  inevitable  to  a  Friend  of  Labor, 
it,  at  any  rate,  suited  her.  It  detached  her  from,  with 
out  repudiating,  her  bringing  up,  and  committed  her  to 
nothing.  It  gave  her,  by  its  mere  refusal  to  stand  for 
anything,  to  involve  her  in  any  particular  frame  of  living, 
what  no  struggles  of  hers  against  a  more  definite  back 
ground  had  ever  given  her,  the  effect  of  being  just  Vir 
ginia.  Even  Frank,  who  could  not  be  thought  of  in  con 
nection  with  furnished  apartments,  called  on  people  in 
studios.  Perhaps  that  was  why  people  had  them. 

Young  Brent  found  himself  calling  there  rather  often. 
He  called  on  those  occasions  when  she  was  surrounded  by 
her  friends  at  interminable  councils,  which,  while  they 
never  seemed  to  arrive  at  any  point  in  particular,  had 
the  advantage,  inestimable  to  youth,  of  setting  out  very 
bravely.  They  were  so  immensely  sure  of  themselves. 
Virginia's  friends,  sure  of  their  authority  and  direction, 
slid,  on  what  were  as  yet,  to  Kenneth,  nearly  unintelli 
gible  phrases,  over  vast  crevasses  of  logic  and  human  his 
tory.  He  was  aware,  in  some  little  separate  compartment 
of  himself,  that  Virginia's  friends  were  many  of  them  in 
that  state  in  which  mere  words  have  potency,  conjuring 
vasty  spirits  before  which  they  deliciously  trembled;  and 
though  that  separate  part  of  him  bore  witness  to  the 
imponderable  quality  of  these  visions  of  social  regen- 


208  THE  FORD 

eration,  he  did  not  wish  to  avoid  for  himself  the  thrill  of 
trembling. 

He  was  not  yet  very  well  acquainted  with  the  duties 
of  an  Agitator,  but  he  saw  that  things  were  accomplished. 
Trades  were  drawn  together,  money  was  raised,  strikes 
organized. 

Now  and  then  the  forward  line  wavered  and  broke  in 
disaster,  and  again  it  surged  perceptibly  toward  accom 
plishment.  For  himself  he  saw  nothing  as  yet,  could  not 
so  much  as  take  the  measure  of  his  new  experience.  He 
would  momentarily  be  aware  of  wrestling  with  angels,  and 
again  the  savor  of  unsuccess,  to  which  his  apprentice 
ship  with  the  Old  Man  had  made  him  particularly  sus 
ceptible,  would  drift  between  him  and  the  Movement, 
like  the  peninsular  fogs,  blotting  out  the  vision. 

In  these  oblivious  intervals  he  found  it  pleasant  to  fall 
back  on  an  old  and  affectionate  acquaintance  with  a 
young  and  pretty  woman.  It  was  one  of  the  advantages 
of  studios,  he  discovered,  that  the  quality  of  affectionate- 
ness  appeared  there  to  be  divorced  from  all  the  implica 
tions  that,  among  the  few  young  women  that  he  had 
known,  rendered  it  prohibitive. 

If  there  was  any  risk  in  his  so  yielding  himself  to  the 
society  of  a  lovely  young  woman,  with  the  shadow  of  un- 
happiness  on  her  past  and  the  flame  of  a  social  crusade 
in  her  bosom,  it  was  not,  at  least,  the  uncharacterized 
menace  that  before  her  marriage  had  threatened  their 
every  encounter. 

About  the  first  of  November  he  had  a  letter  from  Anne 
written  from  the  ranch  in  the  first  flush  of  possession. 

It  was  a  curious  kind  of  letter,  pierced  through  and 
through  with  the  sense  of  her  wanting  him,  and  for  some 


THE  FORD  209 

reason  more  urgent  than  sisterliness  or  even  the  practical 
need  to  confer  with  him  about  the  details  of  the  transfer 
of  the  property.  She  wished  to  know  if  he  had  heard  any 
thing  from  Mr.  Rickart  lately  about  his  plans  for  Agua 
Caliente,  and  who  was  this  man  Elwood  who  was  staying 
at  Tierra  Longa,  and  appeared  to  be  on  terms  of  singu 
lar  intimacy  with  Jamieson,  the  new  superintendent  of 
the  Rickart  property. 

Virginia,  to  whom  all  this  was  confided,  was  not  dis 
posed  to  make  as  much  as  he  would  have  liked  of  Anne's 
wanting  him  —  Anne  who  so  seldom  wanted  anybody. 
"Anne  is  wonderful, "  she  averred,  " wonderful  .  .  .  doing 
without  all  the  things  that  used  to  be  thought  indispen 
sable  for  a  woman,  and  making  a  place  for  herself  that 
men  would  envy!  But  let  me  tell  you,  Kenneth  Brent," 
—  Virginia  was  always  a  little  given  to  the  oracular,  — 
"the  time  will  come  when  women  won't  do  without,  when 
they  will  reach  out  and  take  what  they  want  any  way  they 
can  get  it!*' 

Kenneth  did  not  know  exactly  what  she  meant;  if  it 
came  to  taking  things  had  n't  Anne  got  Palomitas? 

"Oh,  that!"  Virginia  scorned;  "economic  independ 
ence  is  easy."  It  was  the  way  of  Virginia  and  her  friends 
that  they  had  always  to  translate  the  common  experience 
into  their  particular  argot  before  they  could  handle  it 
conversationally.  "It's  not  money  or  property  rights 
that  women  like  Anne  balk  at;  it's  the  right  to  their 
womanhood." 

"Oh,  well,"  -  Kenneth  was  slightly  vague,  —  "I  sup 
pose  Anne  could  get  married  if  she  wanted  to." 

"Marriage — "  began  Virginia,  and  suddenly,  by  one 
of  her  characteristic  transitions,  she  abandoned  the  pro- 


210  THE  FORD 

phetic  for  the  purely  feminine.  "Who  is  this  man  El- 
wood;  what's  he  like?" 

"Man  about  town,  clubman,"  Kenneth  told  her. 
"Awfully  popular  and  clever,  but  a  regular  souse.  I 
imagine  he's  gone  down  to  Agua  Calient e  to  get  on  the 
water  wagon.  He  was  around  the  office  a  few  weeks  ago 
and  looked  as  if  he  needed  it." 

"ButwhatisheZi/ce?  " 

Kenneth  revised  his  description.  "About  forty,  rather 
good-looking  when  he  is  n't  drinking  too  much.  Had  a 
wife  and  family  a  few  years  ago,  but  he  went  on  such 
awful  tears  she  had  to  divorce  him.  He's  rather  held 
himself  together  since  then;  I  believe  there  was  something 
of  a  scandal  and  his  clubs  threatened  to  drop  him.  He's 
one  of  the  sort  that  just  have  to  be  popular." 

"Well,  if  he  is  like  that,"  Virginia  concluded,  "and 
Anne  is  interested  in  him,  it  must  be  because  he  is  up  to 
something." 

"He's  often  in  things  with  the  Old  Man,"  Kenneth 
admitted;  "funny,  too,  I  don't  think  he  cares  about  mak 
ing  money.  He  likes  the  game,  I  guess,  but  he's  got  to 
think  he's  doing  it  for  somebody  else,  for  the  town,  or  a 
bunch  of  his  friends.  He's  pulled  off  several  things  that 
way  .  .  .  but  I  don't  see  what  he  could  possibly  be  doing 
at  Tierra  Longa.  .  .  ."  He  broke  off,  his  mind's  eye  star 
ing  down  the  long  hollow  of  the  valley.  They  drifted 
down  it  on  a  flood  of  "Don't  you  remembers?" 

After  half  an  hour  or  so  they  emerged  again  in  a  warm 
glow  of  recollection.  It  suffused  their  meeting  glance  for 
the  moment  in  which  it  took  Kenneth  to  discover  that  in 
the  sort  of  reform  garment  she  had  on,  a  cut  between  a 
Chinese  coolie's  blouse  and  a  pinafore,  Virginia  did  not 


THE  FORD  211 

look  a  day  older  than  when  he  had  last  seen  her.  Its 
luminous,  soft  green,  relieved  about  the  wrists  and  neck 
with  touches  of  lavender,  went  admirably  with  Vir 
ginia's  clear  red  and  white,  and  the  spark,  bright  and 
dancing  like  a  child's,  that  floated  in  the  wet  gray  iris  of 
her  eyes.  In  the  light  of  renewal  Virginia  preened  herself, 
shaking  out  the  tassels  of  her  sleeve;  Kenneth  caught  and 
played  with  it  as  he  would  have  played  with  a  flower. 
"You  know,  that's  an  awfully  pretty  thing  you  have 
on  .  .  ." 

"It's  something  I  thought  out  for  myself.  Clothes 
ought  to  express  one's  self,  don't  you  think,  —  the  in 
nermost  personality?" 

Kenneth's  rather  serious  young  face  crinkled  pleas 
antly.  "Think  what  a  give-away  that  would  be  to  some 
of  us!"  She  had  become,  by  the  simple  device  of  making 
no  demand  upon  him,  what  every  young  woman  should 
be  at  some  time  in  her  life,  a  delight  and  a  diversion. 

"When  one  stands  for  a  Cause,"  Virginia  insisted, 
"one's  clothes  ought  not  to  distract;  they  ought  to  con 
firm  and  symbolize  the  soul  of  the  movement  —  Well," 
in  swift  adjustment  to  his  touch  of  mockery,  "that 's  what 
Andre*  Trudeau  thinks." 

"Trudeau?"  He  recognized  the  name  as  one  not  in 
frequently  bandied  about  among  Virginia's  friends,  but 
as  yet  attached  to  no  distinguishing  item. 

"The  playwright,  you  know  ..."  Kenneth  let  go  the 
tassel  of  her  blouse,  warned  by  some  subtle  shift  of  all 
her  effects  that  around  this  unexpected  corner  of  the  con 
versation  he  was  about  to  come  into  sight  of  her  real 
audience.  "He's  writing  a  play  about  me;  I  mean  —  of 
course,  it  is  about  the  labor  problem,  and  he  has  modeled 


212  THE  FORD 

the  heroine  after  me  —  my  attack  on  Capitalism,  you 
know  .  .  .  my  being  brought  up  in  the  System  and  — 
finding  myself ." 

She  could  not  quite  carry  it  off  without  a  flush  which 
somehow  kept  the  conversation  on  the  plane  of  enter 
tainment  and  sanctioned  a  resumption  of  tassel  twirling. 
Virginia  was  not  entirely  clear  as  to  what  connection 
there  was  between  Trudeau's  play  and  her  necessity  for 
defining  in  some  subtle  and  personal  way  her  conversion 
to  the  social  revolution,  but  she  was  perfectly  sure  of 
herself. 

"A  distinctive  dress  saves  you  so  much  explanation, " 
she  explained.  "I  have  been  thinking  this  out.  Though 
I  shan't  wear  it,  of  course,  in  public  in  these  colors.  It's 
simply  astonishing  how  many  of  our  women  are  bourgeoise 
in  their  notions,  just  as  the  men  are  capitalistic  in  their 
sympathies.  It's  one  of  the  things  I  do  in  the  play,  — 
that  is,  the  heroine  does,  —  to  make  them  see  that,  make 
them  revolt  against  it.  It's  going  to  be  such  a  help  to 
me,"  she  concluded,  " seeing  myself  realized  on  the  stage 
that  way." 

"Oh,  if  you  are  in  the  play  to  that  extent,  why  don't 
you  act  in  it?"  Kenneth  hazarded. 

"Ken!"  He  recognized  the  flash  and  the  flush  as  mark 
ing  her  instant  appreciation  of  a  new  and  fascinating 
possibility  of  the  game.  "I  hadn't  thought  of  that!" 
Thinking  of  it  now  sent  her  pacing  up  and  down  with  a 
sweep  and  gesture  that  had  already,  at  the  mere  sugges 
tion,  a  touch  of  the  theatrical.  Mr.  Trudeau,  she  ad 
mitted,  was  expected  on  the  Coast  that  winter;  he  was 
expected  to  derive  inspiration  from  the  spectacle  of  Vir 
ginia  in  action,  the  daughter  of  Capitalism  in  the  role  of 


THE  FORD  213 

the  Friend  of  Labor  studied  against  her  native  environ 
ment  .  .  . 

"Oh,  well  —  he'll  get  his  money's  worth  .  .  ." 

The  implication  of  this  speech  of  Kenneth's  and  the 
look  that  went  with  it  were  the  occasion  of  Virginia's 
putting  on  her  most  married  air,  which  she  occasionally 
did  with  him.  "I  am  very  much  honored  by  his  interest 
in  me."  Mr.  Trudeau,  it  appeared,  was  coming  West  for 
his  health;  he  was  one  of  those  whose  souls  ate  up  their 
bodies. 

Somehow  things  were  not  quite  so  comfortable  between 
them  after  that.  Always  at  the  identification  of  any  real 
or  personal  interest  of  Virginia's  with  the  inhabitants  of 
the  Cove,  Brent's  Class  Consciousness  was  assailed  by 
the  faint  odor  of  bilge  with  which,  for  him,  its  air  was 
always  tainted. 

Kenneth  heard  more  or  less  of  Trudeau  in  Virginia's 
circle  after  that;  he  supposed  he  must  have  been  hearing 
it  before  without  taking  note  of  it,  and  of  his  democratic 
drama  for  which  the  world  of  art  had  been  drawing  its 
half-suspended  breath.  Always  Virginia's  friends  talked 
a  great  deal  of  Art,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  much  of 
what  was  said  seemed,  and  probably  was,  ridiculous,  it 
was  very  good  for  him.  Until  now  he  had  thought  of  it 
only  in  connection  with  the  works  of  Art,  more  particu 
larly  of  painting  and  music,  and  in  respect  to  the  ele 
ments  of  these  which  were  incomprehensible  and  for  the 
most  part  unsatisfying.  His  youth  had  been  nourished 
on  the  best  literature;  he  had  even  acquired  from  his 
father  a  discriminating  taste  in  that  which  is  written, 
but  he  had  always  thought  of  it  somewhat  vaguely  as 
proceeding  from  some  undetermined  source  like  the 


214  THE  FORD 

waters  of  a  river.  You  drank  when  you  were  thirsty  with 
out  reference  to  the  secret  springs,  the  hill  streams,  and 
troubled  cataracts  from  which  it  took  its  rise.  He  thought 
of  writers,  and  less  frequently  of  the  great  painters  and 
musicians,  as  existing  somewhere  in  an  aureoled  mist 
among  scenes  and  passions  inaccessible  to  the  ordinary 
person.  He  was  now  to  learn  that  they  lived  chiefly  in 
studios  where  they  pinched  and  starved  with  Pop  Scudder 
along  the  frontiers  of  creative  effort;  that  they  fretted 
impotently  with  Jim  Hand,  possessed  of  inestimable 
holdings  which  they  lacked  the  capital  to  work.  He  was 
made  to  think  of  them  as  men  who  dreamed  out  great 
artistic  enterprises  as  his  father  had  dreamed  the  develop 
ment  of  Tierra  Longa,  and  were  prevented  from  realiza 
tion  by  just  such  combinations  of  personal  and  financial 
disaster.  They  were,  quite  as  much  as  the  Homestead 
Development  Company,  and  quite  as  helplessly,  bound 
to  the  wheel  of  labor  and  passed  under  the  yoke  of  a  sys 
tem  gauged  only  to  admit  the  tribe  of  Rickart  to  the  full 
stature  of  success. 

He  had  arrived  at  some  such  stage  as  this  when  he  felt 
he  could  no  longer  resist  Anne's  definite  insistence  that 
he  should  come  down  to  Palomitas  for  Thanksgiving  pre 
pared  to  spend  a  week.  There  were  still  some  unascer 
tained  items  of  the  water  titles  which  Rickart  had  told 
him  to  look  up,  which  would  give  to  his  trip  the  color  of 
business,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  felt  quite  free  to  ask 
for  the  week  off  to  be  with  his  family  at  their  reinstate 
ment  at  Palomitas. 

Between  T.  Rickart  and  his  young  clerk  there  was  an 
admitted  if  undemonstrative  affection.  Kenneth  could 
remember  being  taken  onto  his  knee  with  Frank  when 


THE  FORD  215 


they  were  children,  and  in  respect  to  Frank,  there  had 
grown  up  between  himself  and  Frank's  father  that  sort 
of  mutual  pride  in  the  Prince  of  the  House  which  might 
be  imagined  between  the  reigning  monarch  and  his 
youngest  son.  Rickart  had  very  definite  notions  of  avoid 
ing,  in  Frank's  bringing-up,  the  pitfalls  which  were  set 
for  the  sons  of  other  rich  men.  At  the  same  time  Frank 
must  not  miss  those  advantages  of  which  his  father  had 
most  felt  the  need  in  his  own  undefended  youth.  Frank 
must  cut  a  figure;  and  yet  Rickart  himself  lacked  the  in 
dispensable  item  of  experience  which  would  have  enabled 
him  to  judge  whether  his  son  was  cutting  just  the  figure 
which  would  insure  his  success  with  his  own  generation. 
He  used  cautiously  to  try  out  his  judgments  of  his  heir 
against  Kenneth's  newer  conclusions;  and  their  mutual 
pride  and  concern  for  Frank  had  endeared  them  to  each 
other  greatly. 

To  tell  the  truth,  Kenneth's  estimate  of  Frank  was  not 
altogether  the  correct  one.  Not  moving  in  his  friend's 
social  circle,  he  could  not  know  that  on  that  side  of  his 
life  young  Rickart  was  thought  a  little  lacking  in  fineness, 
somewhat  overbearing  and  boastful ;  and  in  college  he  was 
not  close  enough  to  realize  that  his  instructors  considered 
Frank's  attainment  specious,  almost  tricky.  Measuring 
him  against  othermch  men's  sons,  Kenneth  credited  his 
friend  with  a  conspicuous  clear-headedness  and  a  bluff 
rejection  of  excesses  which  appeared  admirable;  the 
narrow  range  of  Frank's  ambitions,  and  the  identity 
of  his  own  wishes  with  those  of  his  father  for  him, 
gave  him  the  effect  of  simplicity  and  directness.  Per 
haps  the  best  thing  about  the  younger  Rickart  was  his 
steady  affection  for  and  appreciation  of  Kenneth,  which 


216  THE  FORD 

Brent  repaid  in  kind  as  is  the  way  of  the  young  with 
affection. 

Reasons  like  these  made  it  possible  for  Kenneth  to 
state  quite  frankly  that  he  wished  the  week  for  his  father 
and  Palomitas;  and  gave  point  to  a  certain  reluctance  of 
the  Old  Man  to  grant  what  was  so  candidly  asked  for. 
Years  had  not  taken  a  heavy  toll  of  T.  Rickart.  About 
his  frame  there  was  a  hint  of  the  sparseness  of  age,  but  his 
face  was  still  well  filled  out,  the  eyes  even  a  little  puffy, 
the  chin  too  flaccid.  He  was,  if  anything,  more  inscruta 
ble;  more  and  more  in  the  last  few  years  men  had  dropped 
the  sobriquet  "Old  Man"  in  speaking  of  him.  He  was 
Mr.  Timothy  Rickart. 

In  his  private  office  it  was  Rickart's  habit  in  talking 
with  Kenneth  to  swing  about  in  his  swivel  chair,  one 
hand  grasping  his  desk,  the  thumb  underneath,  and  in 
any  perplexity  the  strong  pudgy  fingers  tapping,  tapping. 
He  swung  about  now  to  the  boy's  request,  his  free  hand 
groping  for  the  unlighted  cigar  which  lay  always  some 
where  among  his  papers.  He  chewed  it  awhile  before  an 
swering. 

"I  suppose  your  sister  feels  she  needs  you?"  he 
brought  out  at  last. 

"I  can't  imagine  Anne's  needing  anybody,"  Kenneth 
laughed  easily,  "but  she'd  like  me  to  come." 

"You've  fixed  up  the  papers,  about  the  mortgage  and 
everything?  She's  not  worrying  .  .  .  ?" 

"Oh  —  no."  At  the  note  of  uncertainty  in  Kenneth's 
voice  the  swivel  chair  creaked  slightly.  Kenneth  had  n't 
been  able  to  escape  the  suggestion  in  his  sister's  letters 
recently  that  she  was  —  well,  not  exactly  worrying,  but 
perplexed. 


THE  FORD  217 

"It's  hard  on  my  father,  I  suppose,"  —  he  offered 
his  own  conclusions,  —  "  going  back  there  now  with 
out  —  with  everything  so  different."  He  could  never 
bring  himself  to  speak  to  any  one  directly  of  his 
mother. 

"Yes,  of  course.  I  suppose  your  father  — "  The  thick 
fingers  began  tapping.  "You  know  I've  always  regarded 
your  father  as  a  very  unusual  man,  Ken."  He  looked 
straight  at  the  boy  suddenly.  "That  idea  of  his  about 
storing  the  river  at  Tierra  Rondo  and  developing  the 
agricultural  lands;  —  that  wasn't  a  pipe  dream  alto 
gether.  ..."  Over  the  inscrutable  eyes  came  a  faint, 
deliberate  veiling.  "Not  altogether.  ...  In  fact,"  — 
the  eyes  met  his  for  a  moment  in  which  Kenneth  had  a 
distinct  impression  of  having  received  a  confidence,  — 
"I  regard  the  agricultural  possibilities  of  Tierra  Longa 
as  distinctly  feasible." 

"My  father's  generally  right  about  anything  con 
nected  with  the  land."  Kenneth  took  a  pardonable  pride 
in  it. 

"Exactly  ...  an  unusual  man  .  .  .  very.  Well,  you'll 
want  at  least  a  week,"  -  in  such  terms  was  consent 
given,  -  "  and  while  you  are  there  you  might  as  well  - 
There  followed  some  details  of  land  and  water  titles, 
items  of  no  immediate  concern,  so  far  as  Kenneth  knew, 
but  all  contributory  to  that  close  watch  which  the  Old 
Man  kept  on  things  in  the  valley.  It  had  been  in  Ken 
neth's  mind  to  inquire  whether  Elwood  was  really  at 
Tierra  Longa  on  his  own  business  or  Rickart's,  but  he 
knew  exactly  when  the  interview  passed  from  the  per 
sonal  to  the  official;  he  could  chat  with  Frank's  father, 
but  never  with  his  employer. 


218  THE  FORD 

It  was  not  all  at  once  that  Kenneth  could  yield  himself 
to  the  spell  of  Palomitas.  He  had  been  several  times  to 
Agua  Caliente,  but  never  once  to  the  ranch  since  the  death 
of  his  mother.  Now  he  found,  as  he  walked  about  with 
Anne,  that  the  old  charm  hung  about  it  in  rags  and  tatters. 

In  the  house  Anne  had  changed  everything.  She  had 
come  over,  weeks  in  advance  of  her  father,  to  accomplish 
it.  There  were  no  traces,  in  the  walls  or  the  furnishings 
at  least,  of  Jevens's  occupancy;  still  less  to  remind  them 
of  their  mother. 

"I  thought  at  first  I  had  made  a  mistake,"  Anne  con 
fessed.  "It  was  dreadful  the  first  day  or  two  the  way 
father  went  about,  seeking,  seeking!  He  never  said  a 
word,  but  he  looked  —  Oh,  I  felt  I  could  n't  bear  it!  And 
then  he  found  her  garden.  .  .  ."  There  had  been  a  little 
fenced  square  at  what  was  architecturally  the  front  of 
the  house,  where  Mrs.  Brent  had  once  attempted  a 
formal  garden.  None  of  them  had  ever  been  able  to  take 
much  interest  in  it  at  Palomitas;  nor  hadMarcia  Brent 
really;  she  had  no  special  sympathy  with  growing  things. 
The  garden  was  merely  a  part  of  her  attempt  to  recon 
struct  at  Palomitas  the  only  fashion  of  life  that  had  ever 
appealed  to  her.  In  the  small  city  from  which  she  had 
come,  everybody  had  a  garden  in  the  front  yard  and  made 
it  more  or  less  an  adjunct  of  social  living.  Somehow  her 
half-hearted  attempt  had  survived  the  devastating  Jevens. 
Ah  Sen,  so  long  as  he  had  stayed,  had  kept  and  watered 
it  from  habit  just  as  he  had  swept  off  the  veranda.  That 
was  how  it  happened  that  the  roses  and  pomegranates  of 
his  wife's  planting  were  the  only  reminders  that  Steven 
Brent  found  of  her  in  the  house  where  as  a  bride  he  had 
brought  her. 


THE  FORD  219 

"It  was  the  first  thing  he  began  to  look  after/'  Anne 
said.  "He  went  over  to  Agua  Caliente  and  got  slips  of  the 
geraniums  Mrs.  Burke  had  started  from  those  mother 
gave  her."  So  she  gave  the  chronicle  of  small  events. 
"Jevens  has  let  the  place  run  down  terribly,  but  it 
is  almost  a  mercy  for  father.  It  needs  him  so.  He 
goes  about  stroking  it  and  nursing  it  back  to  life,  like 


a  woman." 


Jevens,  it  seemed,  had  set  up  a  livery  stable  at  Tierra 
Longa,  though  Anne  could  have  wished  him  farther. 
"I  don't  see  how  he  lives.  .  .  .  Mr.  Elwood  is  almost  his 
only  customer.  They  go  driving  about  all  over  the  coun 
try."  Anne  had  not  met  Elwood  yet,  but  she  distrusted 
him.  "He  gives  out  that  he's  looking  for  a  ranch  to  buy; 
he's  taken  options  on  several.  But  he  does  n't  strike  me 
as  the  type  of  man  who  would  take  to  ranching." 

"He  is  n't,"  Kenneth  assured  her;  "it's  some  kind  of 
gallery  play  ...  or  else  ..."  Something  flashed  over 
him  and  was  gone  before  he  could  put  words  to  it,  the 
sensation  of  having  the  clue  in  his  hand  and  yet  missing 
it.  He  thought  it  would  come  to  him  directly. 

On  Thanksgiving  day,  which  was  the  third  of  Ken 
neth's  visit,  Addie  and  Peters  drove  over  to  have  dinner 
with  them.  Peters  drove  a  spanking  team  and  Addie 
looked  comfortable  and  matronly.  Two  of  their  three 
children  had,  by  some  miracle  of  inheritance,  escaped  the 
fate  which  Addie  had  feared  was  stacked  up  for  them. 
The  girl,  who  "took  after"  Mom  Scudder,  was  positively 
pretty.  But  that  was  not  the  real  surprise  that  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Peters  had  in  store  for  the  family. 

It  was,  if  you  please,  that  they  wanted  to  come 
back  to  Palomitas.  Peters  had  all  of  his  Summerfield 


220  THE  FORD 

twenty  set  out  to  orchard,  part  of  it  had  already  come 
into  bearing;  but  the  charms  of  orcharding  were  not  for 
Addie. 

"Pruain'  and  then  ploughing  pickin'  and  then  packing 
year  in  and  year  out;  they  just  ain't  enough  to  it."  And 
anyway  since  the  planted  land  was  no  longer  available 
for  cropping,  it  was  necessary  for  Peters  to  seek,  until  the 
trees  fruited,  some  other  source  of  income. 

"I  allow,"  said  Addie,  " it's  a  good  mvestment  for  the 
children,  come  they  want  advantages,  but  me  and  Peters 
have  got  to  have  something  with  more  bite  to  it." 

It  was  Peters,  of  course,  who  had  thought  of  Palomitas; 
his  allegiance  to  Mr.  Brent  was  almost  feudal.  Anne  ad- 
rnitted  that  the  future  of  the  ranch  was  problematical 
enough  to  furnish  the  necessary  zest  of  uncertainty,  and 
as  "help"  nobody  could  be  more  satisfactory. 

"I  don't  calculate  to  have  no  more  young  ones," 
Addie  declared  herself;  " there's  one  for  me  and  one  for 
Peters  and  one  extry;  I  reckon  I've  about  done  my  duty. 
And  I  allow  the  best  thing  we  could  do  now,  me  and 
Him,"  —  it  was  so  Peters  had  taken  his  place  in  the 
pronominal  category,  —  "  is  to  tear  off  a  good-sized  piece 
of  work  that  we  can  get  some  intrust  out  of." 

It  turned  out  that  Anne  was  immensely  relieved  by  the 
arrangement.  She  had  n't  contemplated  giving  all  her 
time  to  the  ranch  and  had  n't  seen  yet  how  she  could 
leave  her  father.  "I'm  no  farmer,"  she  said;  "my  work  is 
with  people.  But  with  Addie  and  Peters  here,  I  need  n't 
worry;  and  it  will  be  good  to  have  young  things  about, 
until  your  children  begin  to  come."  She  finished:  "Do 
you  know,  Ken,  in  spite  of  your  being  a  lawyer,  I  can't 
get  over  the  old  idea  we  had  about  your  coming  back 


THE  FORD 

here  to  have  more  sheep  than  anybody  and  turn  the  river 
into  Tierra  Longa." 

"  Somehow  I  can't  get  over  it  myself,"  he  admitted. 
And  it  was  true  that  when  Anne  had  said  that  about  his 
children  coming  to  Agua  Caliente,  he  had  felt  a  warm 
wave  go  over  him,  just  as  if  the  future  had  reached  out 
and  touched  him.  And  suddenly  the  clue  that  he  had 
missed  the  day  before  came  back  to  him.  "  You  know  it 
would  n't  surprise  me  at  all  if  the  Old  Man  should  work 
out  that  irrigating  scheme  of  father's.  Something  he  said 
to  me  the  other  day,  not  so  much  what  he  said  as  the  way 
he  said  it  ...  He's  keeping  tab  on  the  Hillside  Ditch  .  .  . 
But  you  never  can  tell  about  the  Old  Man." 

The  Hillside  Ditch  was  a  local  irrigation  enterprise 
engineered  by  a  dozen  small  landholders  who  had  come 
into  a  little  cash  capital,  realized  in  part  through  the  Old 
Man's  tips  in  the  recent  Summerfield  oil  excitement.  It 
had  been  taken  out  below  the  Town  Ditch  and  watered 
some  hundreds  of  waste  acres  west  of  the  river.  It 
promised  well,  but  fell  short  of  performance,  not  so  much 
because  of  the  limited  capital  of  the  shareholders  as  their 
invincible  rurality. 

What  they  severally  feared  for  their  enterprise  was  that 
it  should  grow  beyond  their  individual  capacity  to  deal 
with  it. 

There  were  so  many  reasons  why  the  reclamation  of 
lands  outside  his  fence  should  enhance  the  value  of  the 
Rickart  property  that  it  was  easy  to  believe  that  the  Old 
Man  might  be  more  interested  in  the  success  of  the  Hill 
side  Ditch  than  in  its  failure;  that  he  meant,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  oil  tips,  to  give  to  the  enterprise  the  final 
fillip  toward  its  most  hopeful  consummation. 


222  THE  FORD 

"If  he  only  would — "  Anne  kindled;  and  then  she 
shook  her  head.  It  was  as  if  she  had  tried  to  match  this 
suggestion  with  one  unspoken  in  her  mind  and  had  not 
succeeded.  "There's  something  .  .  .  something  in  the 
air.  Almost  the  first  day  I  felt  it.  But  it's  not  that;  I'm 
sure  it's  not.  I've  not  had  time  to  go  about  much  .  .  . 
I  have  n't  the  least  idea  what  it  is,  but  I  feel  it  somehow 
—  sinister." 

Anne  had  those  flashes  of  insight  which  Kenneth  re 
membered  in  his  mother;  but  where  Mrs.  Brent  could 
only  sense  m  every  enterprise  the  secret  element  that 
threatened  her  personal  issue,  crying  out  against  it,  Anne, 
sniffing  the  offending  wind,  prepared  for  battle. 


ON  the  way  down  to  Tierra  Longa  next  morning  Ken 
neth  passed  Elwood  and  Jevens  behind  one  of  the  livery 
man's  smart  teams,  driving  furiously.  Neither  of  them 
recognized  him,  but,  as  he  drew  out  of  the  road  to  let  them 
pass,  he  saw  that  Jevens  was  in  that  high  mood  which  in  a 
man  of  his  type  means  mischief.  He  was  engaged  in  what 
for  him  was  the  soul  of  all  enterprise,  the  business  of 
" putting  something  over"  on  somebody,  but  for  the  mo 
ment  Brent's  attention  passed  him  over  to  fix  on  his  com 
panion.  Elwood  sat  loosely  in  the  wide  seat  of  the  buggy 
nursing  his  knee;  his  handsome,  dissipated  face  expressing 
nothing  so  much  as  the  satisfaction  of  an  actor  carrying 
off  his  part  lightly,  pleased  with  himself  and  with  his 
audience. 

What  that  part  was  Kenneth  could  have  guessed  even 
without  the  help  he  had  from  the  ranchers  in  Tierra 
Longa;  —  the  part  of  the  open-handed  overlord,  his 
weakness  condoned  by  the  extent  to  which  he  took  them 
into  his  confidence  about  it;  his  strength  enhanced  by 
being  made  to  seem  mysterious.  For  Elwood  had  made 
no  secret  of  his  having  come  to  the  country  to  recoup  the 
waste  and  loss  of  his  amiable  weakness.  He  offered  his 
friendliness  in  proof  of  its  amiability;  his  long  bouts  of 
hell-bent  driving  with  Jevens  captured  their  imaginations. 

When  the  Tierra  Longans  looked  out  of  the  windows 
to  see  his  shining  buggy  top  careening  between  the 
gopher  hills  and  the  sage,  they  saw  also  the  devils  of 
thirst  that  pursued  him. 


224  THE  FORD 

They  rose  to  his  game  of  pretending  that  he  was  look 
ing  for  a  ranch,  pleased  with  themselves  at  having  taken 
the  cue  so  neatly.  It  was  quite  understood  that  Elwood 
did  not  really  want  a  ranch;  he  wanted  a  plaything;  he 
wanted  his  mind  seized  and  occupied  by  new  and  de 
lightful  suppositions  about  what  he  would  do  with  one  or 
another  property  in  Tierra  Longa.  He  had  taken  three 
options  already  on  desirable  ranches,  but  it  was  not  ex 
pected  that  he  would  buy  any  one  of  them.  Willard,  in 
fact,  had  stated  that  he  would  never  have  given  an  op 
tion  at  all  if  he  had  thought  there  had  been  the  least 
chance  of  Elwood's  taking  it  up.  Willard's  was  a  fat  field 
and  lay  along  the  river.  Elwood  himself  had  explained 
that  the  advantage  of  the  Willard  property  was  that  if  he 
wanted  to  get  on  the  wagon  again,  he  would  be  near  the 
water.  Such  jokes,  made  possible  about  a  property  that 
had  taken  three  generations  to  bring  to  fruition,  tickled 
them  mightily  in  Tierra  Longa. 

It  gave  them  a  feeling  of  opulence  to  see  him  toss  up 
and  catch  again  the  very  source  of  their  livelihood.  And 
besides,  he  paid  good  money  for  his  options.  He  paid  good 
money  for  everything.  Jevens  might  be  said  to  live  by  him ; 
the  town's  one  hotel  took  on  the  color  of  prosperity.  He 
had  an  engaging  way  of  thrusting  a  bill  into  a  man's  hand 
—  any  sort  of  a  bill,  whipped  out  of  his  pocket  on  impulse, 
but  never  by  any  chance  into  the  wrong  hand  —  saying, 
"Here,  old  chap,  drink  this  for  me,"  and  then  dashing  off 
about  the  country  with  Jevens,  bestridden  by  his  familiar 
devil.  The  recipient  had  always  a  pleasant  feeling  of  hav 
ing  assisted  at  Elwood's  reinstatement  without  curtailing 
any  of  his  own  indulgence. 

There  was  no  doubt  that  Elwood  had  played  success- 


THE  FORD 

fully  to  the  gallery;  but  there  was  nothing  yet  discover 
able  to  young  Brent  other  than  the  man's  characteristic 
need  to  find  himself  en  rapport  with  his  audience.  El- 
wood  had  made  instinctively  sure  of  recovering  his  lost 
control  by  dramatizing  his  search  for  it.  Confirmed,  by 
what  he  heard  of  him  at  Tierra  Longa,  in  his  reading  of 
Elwood  as  the  constitutional  seeker  after  popularity, 
Kenneth  missed  whatever  significance  there  might  have 
been  in  the  figure  of  Jevens  as  he  had  seen  him  that  morn 
ing  instinct  with  the  joy  of  meanness.  He  had,  too,  his 
own  preoccupations. 

All  the  way  down  the  valley  the  land  had  reasserted 
her  claim  to  him.  Under  the  thin  bleakness  of  November 
he  felt  its  potential  fecundity,  he  felt  its  invitation  and 
the  advertisement  of  man's  inadequacy.  It  came  and 
offered  itself  to  the  hand,  and  yet  no  man  had  tamed  it. 
Far  down,  the  river  wasted  seaward;  nearer,  the  insidious 
growth  of  sage  and  camise  retook  the  slight  clearings  of 
abandoned  claims.  He  passed  the  old  Scudder  cabin,  long 
since  stripped  of  its  siding  by  other  and  none  the  less 
succumbing  homesteaders.  Out  from  the  town,  he  saw 
the  Hillside  District  stretched  like  an  arm  along  the  line 
of  farms,  checkered  with  patches  of  sand  and  alkali;  and 
beyond  it,  pointing  the  yet  untouched  lands,  the  thin 
blue  blade  of  the  new  ditch.  Here  and  there  scattered 
homesteads  tugged  at  the  dry  breast  of  the  valley  .  .  . 
and  over  it  all  the  defeating,  jealous  overlordship  of  the 
Old  Man. 

Familiar  as  he  was  with  the  Rickart  methods,  noth 
ing  had  ever  fully  explained  to  young  Brent  his  studied 
discouragement  of  agricultural  development  in  Tierra 
Longa.  The  land  which  he  had  acquired  outside  the 


226  THE  FORD 

Agua  Caliente  fence,  unwatered  as  it  was,  could  hardly  pay 
its  interest  in  wild  pasture.  Yet  year  after  year,  at  the 
precise  moment  of  falling  courage  or  failing  crops,  Rickart 
through  his  agents  had  effected  a  transfer  of  titles.  It 
was  reported  that  no  one  besides  Juan  Romero  and  the 
Old  Man  himself  actually  knew  how  much  of  the  land 
outside  the  fence  belonged  to  Rickart.  What  else  could 
he  mean  by  it  except  to  reserve  for  himself  the  moment 
of  releasing  it  to  occupation.  As  he  found  his  mind  pos 
sessed  by  this  idea,  two  distinct  sets  of  emotions  played 
over  Kenneth.  He  thought,  as  he  had  been  trained  to 
think  in  Rickart's  office,  of  the  enormous  profits  which 
could  be  sheared  from  the  land  in  the  process  of  turning 
it  back  to  farm  and  field  and  orchard,  profits  which  would 
legitimately  accrue  to  the  long-sightedness  of  the  Old 
Man,  who  had  foreseen  and  fended  it  all  these  years  from 
lesser  claimants. 

Handled  as  the  Summerfield  property  had  been,  it 
should  yield  the  income  of  a  principality.  Brent's  nascent 
business  instinct  licked  eagerly  at  the  proposition;  it  was 
the  sort  of  thing  that  no  man  in  his  senses  would  hesitate, 
given  the  opportunity  to  be  "in"  on  it. 

And  along  with  that  there  was  a  small  flame  singing  in 
him  of  the  new  social  order.  All  those  patient,  drudging 
people  to  whom  the  land  must  inevitably  come,  why 
should  it  be  passed  to  them  through  Rickart's  raking 
fingers?  What  was  the  difference  between  Rickart's  fore 
sight  and  Steven  Brent's,  that  the  one  should  pay  toll  to 
the  other?  Was  not  Pop  Scudder's  vision  of  the  future  of 
Tierra  Longa  as  good  as  another's?  Was  it  any  less  ulti 
mate  and  inclusive?  In  the  city  Kenneth  had  stood  out 
among  Virginia's  friends  for  the  right  of  a  man  like 


THE  FORD  227 

Rickart  to  realize  on  his  natural  capacity;  here  suddenly 
in  the  abandoned  homesteader's  cabins,  sun-warped  and 
canted  by  the  wind  out  of  all  use  as  housing  or  shelter,  he 
was  confronted  with  the  absurdity  of  setting  up  for  the 
Old  Man  an  especial  privilege  in  futures. 

As  he  rode  into  the  little  settlement  of  half  a  hundred 
houses  ranked  on  either  side  of  the  highway,  overhung  by 
great  cottonwoods  as  by  a  cloud,  it  needed  only  the  recog 
nition  by  the  townspeople  of  how  completely  he  was 
theirs  as  against  any  claim  the  Old  Man  had  on  him,  to 
have  cleared  his  path  directly  to  the  attitude  he  was  fin 
ally  to  take  and  maintain  in  regard  to  Tierra  Longa. 

But  the  fact  was  that  nobody  recognized  in  him  any 
thing  other  than  the  shy  boy  they  remembered  trotting 
at  Steven  Brent's  heels,  and  since  become  a  clerk  of  the 
Old  Man's.  Everywhere  he  met  the  guarded  courtesy 
which  is  paid  to  powers  half  feared  and  never  wholly 
understood.  He  felt  subservience  in  it  which  annoyed 
him,  and  distrust  which  hurt  his  new  social  sensitiveness. 
Unable  to  formulate  the  distinction,  he  nevertheless 
understood  that,  though  he  had  begun  to  think  for  the 
Tierra  Longans,  he  by  no  means  thought  with  them.  His 
sympathies  suffered  a  check  in  finding  them  so  easily 
diverted  from  their  situation  by  Elwood's  handful  of 
flung  coin. 

Out  along  the  Hillside  Ditch  young  Brent  came  into 
more  personal  touch  through  the  two  youngest  of  the 
Scudder  boys,  working  a  quarter-section  on  the  shares. 
Lemuel,  who  had  been  one  of  those  with  whom  he  had 
shared  the  pagan  ecstasy  of  bodily  competence  at  school, 
had  laid  off  a  land  close  to  the  fence  and  was  turning  it 
behind  his  plough  in  crumbly,  tawny  furrows.  His  lank 


228  THE  FORD 

body  swung  to  the  rhythm  of  the  team;  power  passed 
from  his  great,  reddened  hands  on  the  handles  to  the  steel 
share;  he  humored  and  cuddled  it  as  a  musician  his  in 
strument.  Great  flocks  of  red- winged  blackbirds  settled  in 
his  wake;  now  and  again,  as  the  ploughman  shouted  to  his 
team,  they  exploded  skyward,  there  to  execute  their 
wheeling  wing  dances  and  drop  shouting  again  to  the 
treasure  of  the  new- turned  soil.  Kenneth  tied  his  horse 
at  the  fence  and  came  across  to  renew  acquaintance;  they 
spoke,  not  of  themselves,  but  of  the  earth  and  the  sky,  as 
chance-met  mariners  might  of  the  sea;  they  took  up 
handfuls  of  the  brown  sandy  loam  and  fingered  it  be 
tween  thumb  and  palm.  Kenneth  took  the  plough  at 
last  and  guided  it  once  about  the  land.  He  was  surprised 
to  find  how  soft  he  was;  the  handles  thrust  and  threw 
him,  but  before  he  was  halfway  around  he  began  to  re 
spond  automatically  to  the  sensitive  share,  he  felt  the 
scantly  sodded  soil  curl  back  steadily. 

Lem  eyed  the  deep-turned  furrow  with  appreciation. 
"Once  you've  learned  the  trick  it  remains  on  the  body 
till  death,"  —  he  quoted  the  gym.  teacher. 

Kenneth  leaned  on  the  handle  bar,  a  little  winded. 
The  inexplicable  excitement  of  those  born  to  wrestle  with 
the  earth  and  conquer  it  tingled  in  him.  They  looked 
riverward  along  the  curved  blade  of  the  ditch  and  up  the 
slope  of  Palomitas  to  where  the  Torr'  lifted  into  the  thin 
blue. 

"It's  a  great  country,  Lem." 

"It  sure  is,  a  great  country." 

Thus  having  propitiated  the  genius  loci,  they  were  free 
to  talk  of  more  intimate  concerns.  At  the  end  of  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  of  personal  history  they  came  to  this. 


THE  FORD  229 

" Think  Elwood  is  up  to  anything?"  from  Kenneth. 

"You  ought  to  know."  Lem  had  refused  another  cig 
arette  from  Kenneth's  case  and  was  busy  with  his  own 
"makings." 

"What  makes  you  say  that?" 

"Ain't  the  Old  Man  backin'  him?" 

Kenneth  realized  that  this  was  a  point  on  which  he 
should  have  been  informed,  at  least,  but  he  came  back 
with,  "What  makes  you  think  so?" 

"Well,  he  asks  a  mighty  intelligent  lot  of  questions  for 
one  that  ain't  got  no  intrust  in  'em  except  askin'." 

"What  sort  of  questions?" 

Lem  lit  his  cigarette  and  carefully  trod  out  the  match  in 
the  soft  soil.  "  Kinda  in  that  line  yourself,  Lawyer  Brent, 
ain't  you? "  Then  he  relented.  "I  don't  know  as  it's  any 
ways  again  a  man  to  be  of  an  inquirin'  disposition,  but  if 
there 's  anything  about  the  Hillside  Ditch  Company  that 
he  don't  know,  — water  rights  an'  land  titles  cm'  by-laws, 
it  won't  be  for  want  of  askin',  for  all  he  mixes  his  questions 
up  with  a  lot  of  josh  and  soft-sawder.  An'  Jim  Hand 
says- 

" Jim  Hand?" 

" 01' Jim.  He'sditch-ridin'."  Lem  made  a  resounding 
hollow  of  his  hands  and  raised  a  tremendous  halloo. 
"Oh-ee,  Jim!  —  He  was  there  alongside  the  head  gate  a 
while  ago,"  he  explained.  "Jim's  son-in-law  keeps  him 
over  here  so  he  can  drink  himself  to  death  nice  and  quiet 
without  causin'  no  scandal.  Sieffert  havin'  done  every 
thing  in  that  line  himself  that  he  thinks  the  family  can 
carry.  And  Jim's  nursin'  of  himself  along  so's  to  keep 
son-in-law  out  of  the  property  as  long  as  possible.  Being 
as  Sieffert  owns  a  couple  of  shares  in  the  ditch,  we  give 


230  THE  FORD 

Jim  the  job  of  zanquero  just  to  keep  the  game  going." 
No  one  appearing  out  of  the  willows  that  skirted  the  curve 
of  the  canal  in  answer  to  his  call,  Lem  explained  that  Jim 
professed  to  have  seen  Elwood  and  Jevens  up  the  river, 
engaged  in  some  mysterious  rite  of  waving  arms,  stoop 
ing  and  squinting.  They  would  be  at  it  half  a  day  at  a 
time  with  the  top  buggy  drawn  close  under  the  dunes  out 
of  range  of  observation,  and  though  Jim  had  never  been 
close  enough  to  identify  the  instruments  they  used,  he 
claimed  that  there  had  been  instruments.  "An'  even  at 
that  they  might  have  been  photographin',"  Lem  allowed. 
"I  see  this  man  Elwood  packin'  a  camera  up  to  Agua 
Caliente." 

Kenneth  was  silent,  knowing  that  if  Elwood  was,  as 
seemed  possible,  playing  the  Old  Man's  game,  it  was  no 
part  of  his  to  say  yes  or  no  to  it.  And  yet  making  a  mys 
tery  of  himself  might  be  so  easily  a  part  of  the  game 
Elwood  played  with  Tierra  Longa;  he  was  perfectly  ca 
pable  of  amusing  himself  at  the  expense  of  Jevens's  pas 
sion  for  trickery. 

When  Lem  Scudder  spoke  again  it  was  with  a  certain 
wistfulness.  "There  's  some  that  allows  that  the  Old 
Man's  gettin'  ready  to  pull  off  some  kind  of  irrigation 
project.  I  reckon  if  he  is  you'll  be  in  on  it?" 

"Oh!"  Kenneth  kindled  to  the  sense  of  unlimited  op 
portunity  in  the  land  that  dipped  away  from  where  they 
stood,  and  rose  again  to  the  round-back  Saltillos.  ' '  If  there 
is  anything  of  that  kind  afoot,  we  '11  all  be  in  it !"  It  really 
seemed  to  him  as  he  spoke  that  it  must  be  so;  he  could  not 
conceive  how  it  should  be  otherwise. 

The  business  of  informing  himself  as  to  the  exact  legal 
status  of  local  water  rights  and  land  titles  along  the 


THE  FORD  231 

Arroyo  Verde  kept  Kenneth  in  the  valley  for  four  days 
besides  those  he  allowed  himself  with  his  family,  and  in 
volved  a  trip  to  Summerfield  to  search  the  county  rec 
ords.  He  saw  no  more  of  Elwood,  but  he  heard  of  him, 
and  nowhere  so  descriptively  as  at  Agua  Caliente.  Jamie- 
son,  the  new  Superintendent,  was  a  stiff  man  who  would 
not  let  himself  be  liked  for  fear  he  would  be  the  less  re 
spected,  and  the  knowledge  of  Elwood's  easy  popularity 
sat  sourly  on  him. 

"A  man  that  has  to  play  the  fool  to  get  his  business 
done  may  look  to  be  made  a  fool  himself  if  he  is  not  care 
ful,"  said  Jamieson;  and  though  he  professed  to  know 
nothing  of  what  that  business  might  be,  he  professed  it  too 
often. 

All  these  things  were  talked  over  with  Anne  as  they 
happened.  It  did  n't  occur  to  Kenneth  that  in  posting  his 
sister  as  to  the  status  of  water  rights  in  Tierra  Longa,  he 
was  putting  her  on  the  same  footing  as  his  employer.  It 
was  all  information  which  Anne  might  have  picked  up  for 
herself  had  she  hired  a  lawyer's  clerk  to  do  it  for  her. 

It  gave  him  a  pleasant  sense  of  being  the  man  of  the 
family  to  have  Anne  sit  questioning  him  under  the  eve 
ning  lamp,  clear-headed  and  incisive,  her  well-kept  fingers 
tapping  the  cloth.  Anne  was  remarkably  conversant  with 
land  law,  for  a  woman;  she  bent  herself  to  mastering 
riparian  rights,  titles  of  use  and  surplusage.  Now  and  then 
Steven  Brent  would  add  something  to  the  conversation 
out  of  his  well-stored  knowledge. 

"  It  is  this  man  Elwood,"  concluded  Anne,  "  who  has  the 
key  to  the  situation.  I  must  really  have  a  look  at  him." 
She  revolved  ways  and  means  for  accomplishing  that,  and 
then  to  her  brother  she  suggested:  "I  suppose  if  there  is 


232  THE  FORD 

anything  on  foot,  you  11  know  as  soon  as  anybody?  Ken 

—  if  such  a  scheme  should  go  through  I  must  be  in  on  it 

—  I  've  just  got  to  be  in  on  it." 

"Well,  you  got  what  you  wanted  about  the  mort 
gage-  '  Kenneth's  faith  in  his  sister's  ability  to  get 
"in"  with  the  Old  Man  had  gone  up  a  notch  or  two;  but 
she  came  at  him  now  from  another  angle. 

"Ken,  do  you  like  being  a  lawyer;  like  it,  I  mean,  the 
way  father  likes  being  a  rancher,  the  way  I  like  —  what 
I'm  doing?" 

"Well,  there  is  n't  anything  about  it  I  dislike,"  Ken 
neth  carefully  considered.  "But  I 'm  not  really  a  lawyer; 
I  'm  only  a  kind  of  —  legal  detective.  I  go  around  looking 
for  dropped  stitches  and  picking  up  threads.  Straker 
handles  all  the  cases  in  court.  Yes;  I  like  it.  It  gives  me 
a  chance  to  look  about  me." 

It  had  always  been  agreed  between  brother  and  sister 
that  Kenneth's  apprenticeship  with  the  Old  Man  had 
been  merely  in  order  that  he  might  look  about  him,  that 
at  the  precise  moment  he  should  find  himself  in  a  position 
to  "get  into  something"  most  effectively.  In  the  begin 
ning  they  had  expected  this  to  happen  much  earlier. 
Kenneth  did  not  know  quite  how  to  explain  to  his  sister 
the  sensation  he  had  of  being  carried  along  in  the  Old 
Man's  financial  career,  as  one  is  carried  by  genii  in  Ara 
bian  fairy  tales,  by  the  hair  of  his  head.  He  had  seen  great 
ventures  in  lands  and  forests  and  minerals  pass  beneath 
him,  but  all  too  fast  for  him  to  select  that  comfortable 
pocket  into  which  he  was  to  drop  with  his  feet  under  him. 
He  tried,  instead,  to  express  something  of  his  new  sense 
of  social  direction. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "that  I  care  so  much  as  I  did 


THE  FORD  233 

about  getting  'in.1  I  don't  know  that  there  is  n't  going 
to  be  a  bigger  piece  of  work  and  more  fun  in  getting  out 
and  getting  others  out." 

"As  —  how,  for  instance? " 

"Out  of  the  System.  .  .  .  Capitalism,  you  know  .  .  ." 
He  stated  it  badly;  the  terms  which  passed  so  glibly 
among  Virginia's  friends  were  stiff  upon  his  tongue,  but 
Anne  took  his  meaning.  He  was  surprised  to  find  that  she 
had  read  the  same  books,  and  to  what  widely  differing 
conclusion. 

Anne  was  not  troubled  by  any  incubus  of  a  System. 
" There  is  n't  any  such  animal,"  she  insisted.  "  It's  only 
the  way  we  look  at  things.  As  soon  as  we  learn  to  see 
things  straight,  we'll  moult  the  System." 

"But  how  —  straight?" 

"Well,  the  Way  Things  Are  .  .  .  not  what  we  like,  you 
know,  or  think  we  ought  to,  but  real  values.  Society  is 
a  sort  of  mirage,  a  false  appearance  due  to  refraction.  .  .  . 
I  mean  most  of  the  things  we  do  and  think  important  only 
seem  so  because  of  all  sorts  of  hang-overs,  -  -  political, 
religious,  all  kinds  of  ignorances  .  .  .  that's  because  we 
have  Androcentric  culture." 

This  was  a  step  beyond  even  Virginia.  Kenneth  had 
to  have  the  word  explained  to  him. 

"I  mean,"  —  she  went  more  slowly,  —  "because  every 
thing  has  been  accepted  from  the  point  of  view  of  men 
only,  and  that 's  the  obvious.  Women  have  a  much  keener 
sense  of  real  values.  Take  marriage,  for  instance ;  —  a 
woman  will  marry  a  man  because  he  is  clean  and  honest 
and  will  make  a  good  father  for  her  children,  but  a  man 
won't  marry  a  woman  unless  she  makes  him  feel  a  certain 
way  .  .  .  unless  there's  a  —  mirage." 


234  THE  FORD 

There  was  more  of  this  in  the  same  strain  which  ruffled 
the  surface  of  his  egotism.  What  kind  of  a  world  would 
that  be  in  which  a  man  could  n't  do  or  take  because  he 
felt  like  it,  but  must  wait  always  on  the  essential  values  of 
things?  But  he  was  sensible  that  to  admit  his  irritation 
was  to  admit  the  argument.  He  had  known  that  his  sister 
was  a  suffragist,  but  he  had  n't  expected  this  of  her. 

"We're  getting  more  sensible  about  some  things," 
Anne  admitted.  "Look  at  land;  I 'm  learning  a  lot  about 
land,  and  the  first  thing  to  learn  is  that  you  can  absolutely 
find  out  what  land  is  good  for,  and  in  time  we  '11  find  out 
that,  no  matter  what  you  feel  about  it,  it  only  belongs  to 
the  people  who  can  do  those  things.  Say  a  certain  piece 
of  land  will  grow  prunes  or  potatoes;  then  you've  got  to 
have  prune  people  or  potato  people,  or  else  somebody 
makes  a  fool  of  himself.  I  sent  some  of  the  Summerfield 
swamp  soil  to  the  University  last  week  to  have  it  ana 
lyzed,  but  there 's  nobody  can  analyze  the  man  that  wants 
to  buy  it  from  me.  And  then,  when  we  get  into  a  mess,  we 
put  it  on  to  the  System!  I  can  make  a  Socialist  out  of  a 
prune  man,"  said  Anne,  "by  keeping  him  six  years  on  a 
piece  of  ground  that  was  only  meant  to  grow  potatoes." 

There  was  a  great  deal,  Kenneth  felt,  that  could  have 
been  said  to  this,  but  he  did  not  know  enough  to  say  it. 

It  was  only  Anne,  of  course;  and  a  man  is  not  much 
more  likely  to  be  moved  by  his  sister's  philosophy  than 
he  is  by  her  beauty;  still,  in  default  of  the  absolute  thing 
to  say,  he  had  to  go  on  listening. 

"All  this  talk  about  the  System,"  Anne  exploded, — 
"it's  only  a  new  kind  of  devil  that's  been  invented  to  ex 
plain  what  people  won't  admit,  their  own  mistakes  about 
the  way  the  world  is  made.  And  even  then  they  can't  lay 


THE  FORD  235 

everything  to  it.  Look  at  Jim  Hand;  he's  a  teamster  who 
failed  at  being  a  promoter,  and  I '  ve  no  doubt  he  lays  it 
to  the  System  .  .  .  and  what  had  the  System  to  do  with 
Virginia's  making  a  mess  of  her  marriage?" 

Kenneth  struck  out  against  the  flood  that  threatened 
his  new-found  social  consciousness.  "You  know  a  lot," 
he  admitted,  "but  I  don't  see  how  you  can  be  so  sure  of 
things  like  that.  So  far  as  I  know,  you've  never  been  in 
love  even  .  .  .  and  to  hear  you  talk  one  would  think  that 
you  and  not  Virginia  had  been  the  married  woman." 

He  was  sorry  the  moment  he  had  said  that.  There 
came  a  whiteness  across  Anne's  face  such  as  follows  a  blow, 
and  no  flush  to  succeed  it.  He  had  an  idea  that  Anne's 
feelings  about  marriage  were  tied  up  somehow  with  her 
recollection  of  their  mother's  unhappiness,  and  the  things 
he  would  never  let  any  one  tell  him  about  the  way  she 
died.  .  .  . 

"And  I'm  always  telling  you,"  said  Anne,  "that  Vir 
ginia  has  neither  been  really  in  love  nor  really  married!" 
She  recovered  herself,  turned  the  question  back  upon  him 
with, ' '  Don't  you  ever  think  of  marriage  for  yourself,  Ken?  " 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  ...  I  guess  I'm  a  little  like  Addie 
about  the  orchards."  He  laughed,  recalling  a  characteris 
tic  speech  of  Mrs.  Peters:  " Seems  like  I  can't  bear  lookin' 
at  an  orchard  no  longer.  It 's  so  kind  of  sot;  it  don't  give 
you  no  chanct  to  stretch  your  vision." 

"Marriage  is  so  kind  of  sot"  he  confessed. 

"Oh,  well,  that's  because  you  haven't  met  the  right 
woman,"  Anne  comforted  him  offhandedly;  "she'll 
stretch  your  vision  for  you  when  you  find  her." 

And  still  he  could  n't  help  wondering  what  Anne  knew 
about  it. 


VI 

THE  effect  of  his  sister's  free  stride  was  to  bring  out  for 
Kenneth  the  essentially  feminine  quality  of  Virginia's 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  labor  unionism.  Anne  herself 
had  contributed  something.  "It's  her  baby,"  Anne  in 
sisted  ; "  it  has  the  advantage  over  a  real  baby  inasmuch  as 
she  can't  spoil  it  with  coddling,  and  yet  she  can  neglect 
it  without  getting  into  trouble  with  the  Society  for  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children." 

People  who  did  not  know  the  generosity  of  Anne's  per 
formance  found  her  judgments  caustic.  She  probed  like 
a  surgeon,  but  there  was  something  regal  in  the  way  she 
nursed  you  back  to  soundness.  Kenneth,  who  presented 
the  normal  male  reaction  to  any  sort  of  feminine  acute- 
ness,  often  winced  under  her  searching  hand,  but  this 
time  he  recognized  the  veracity  of  her  touch. 

Confronted  with  the  spectacle  of  Virginia's  fostering  of 
the  cause  of  social  revolution,  Kenneth  saw  how  inevit 
ably  one  woman's  estimate  of  another  is  nearer  the  mark 
than  any  man's! 

Virginia's  child  had  grown,  had,  like  an  infant  Hercules, 
come  to  grip  its  cradle  with  the  python  folds  of  "the  In 
terests,"  and  Virginia,  as  she  patted  the  young  movement 
and  nourished  it  from  her  purse,  exhibited  the  most 
charming  maternal  poses.  The  struggle  of  the  labor 
unions  for  the  mastery  of  San  Francisco  proceeded  more 
dramatically,  with  a  swifter  recurrence  of  clinch  and  cli 
max  than  on  almost  any  other  civic  stage.  Freer,  on  the 
one  hand,  from  sordid  pressure  of  poverty  and  on  the 


THE  FORD  237 

other  from  the  blindness  of  fatness,  it  displayed  some 
thing  of  the  epic  quality  of  the  West. 

Through  its  spirited  phases  Virginia  moved  electrically, 
with  how  much  of  positive  organizing  value  Kenneth  was 
too  little  acquainted  with  the  movement  to  tell;  but  cer 
tainly  with  an  effect.  Always,  where  she  went  among  the 
workers,  exhaling,  along  with  more  appreciable  odors  of 
beer,  onions,  and  sweated  bodies,  a  f aint  savor  of  unsuccess, 
she  was  the  center  of  a  little  whirl  of  ideas  and  opinions 
which,  contained  like  the  dust  devils  of  Tierra  Longa 
within  a  very  narrow  reach,  carried,  nevertheless,  dust 
of  the  cosmos.  Insensibly,  as  the  winter  advanced,  Ken 
neth  found  himself  drawn  into  the  outer  circle  of  that 
whirl,  with  that  dust  in  the  nostrils. 

Unionism,  Socialism,  Syndicalism,  how  many  of  the 
hot  ploughshares  which  were  trodden  by  the  young  men 
of  the  early  twentieth  century  are  cold  to  the  light-footed 
radicalism  of  to-day!  They  were  many  of  them  cold  then 
to  Kenneth  except  as  they  were  warmed  for  him  by  Vir 
ginia's  triumphant  personality.  Virginia  had  so  many 
ways  of  getting  at  him. 

There  was  her  old  childish  trick  of  laying  hold  of  a 
wrist  or  a  knee  or  an  elbow  when  her  swift  imagination 
outran  the  speed  of  words  to  express  it;  a  trick  that  the 
almost  family  nature  of  her  relationship  to  Kenneth  dis 
armed  of  familiarity.  It  answered  with  them,  as  it  has 
with  millions  of  the  young;  —  those  swift,  deceptive  short 
circuits  of  sex  attraction,  offering  themselves  as  a  superior 
intellectual  sympathy,  and  serving  nature  quite  as  much 
in  the  one  thing  as  the  other.  There  was  a  trick  she  had 
of  drawing  out  of  their  common  experience  illuminating 
instances,  to  lay  alongside  the  immediate  problem  of  in- 


238  THE  FORD 

dustrial  agitation.  She  would  make  these  excursions  into 
his  past  with  a  swiftness  and  verve  that  prevented  his 
realizing  that,  while  she  seemed  honestly  to  be  illustrating 
her  case  with  examples  of  the  Scudders  and  Jim  Hand, 
she  had  only  restated  it  in  terms  of  his  personal  pre 
judices.  But  one  way  and  another  the  salient  problems 
of  the  day  got  themselves  stated  for  him.  From  time  to 
time,  while  Virginia's  hot  little  hand,  under  the  influence 
of  some  flaming  diatribe,  worked  along  the  coat  sleeve 
into  his  palm,  or  while  from  the  shouldering  crowd  he 
watched  Virginia's  self  shaking  her  brave  pennant  in 
the  face  of  the  Established  Order,  the  miracle  of  oneness 
happened;  he  felt  for  a  moment  the  pulse  of  the  world 
of  labor  in  his  own  breast. 

But  a  little  before  the  holidays  the  sense  of  the  world 
movement  was  obliged  to  give  place  to  more  personal 
and  poignant  emotions  set  in  motion  by  the  coming  of  the 
playwright  Andre"  Trudeau  and  his  sister  Ellis.  Their  ar 
rival,  of  the  date  of  which  Virginia  for  some  reason  had 
neglected  to  be  explicit,  took  place  during  one  of  Brent's 
short  trips  out  of  town,  and  the  first  glimpse  that  he  had 
of  Trudeau  was  of  a  physique,  which  to  the  practiced 
California  eye  presented  all  the  characteristics  of  a 
"  lunger,"  a  pair  of  eyes  gentle  and  wide  apart,  a  mouth 
too  full  and  pouting,  barely  made  to  seem  masculine  by 
the  pointed  beard  and  mustache  and  a  crop  of  dark, 
springy  hair  spraying  out  like  a  fountain.  He  was  mak 
ing  an  address  at  the  time  in  that  same  Turn-verein 
hall  where  Kenneth  had  once  listened  to  the  one-eyed 
prophet  of  Industrialism,  and  the  general  ineffectual- 
ness  of  his  exterior  was  heightened  by  the  plucking 
gesture,  many  times  repeated,  of  a  man  between  whom 


THE  FORD  239 

and  his  audience  gathered  successive  veils  of  formless 
hypothesis. 

The  address,  however,  had  not  begun  when  Kenneth, 
finding  every  seat  occupied,  had  slipped  into  the  space 
between  the  wings  of  the  rather  tawdry  stage,  where  he 
hoped  to  find  a  packing-case  at  least  within  sight  and 
sound  of  the  speakers.  Moving  in  the  half  light  he  had 
come  plump  upon  a  slender,  anxious  girl  with  a  man's 
heavy  overcoat  trailing  from  her  hands,  looking  out,  evi 
dently  in  great  perplexity,  at  the  group  already  seated 
on  the  stage  in  full  view  of  the  audience.  At  the  sound 
of  Kenneth's  blundering  in  the  back  stage  obscurity, 
she  turned  with  instant  relief;  she  might,  indeed,  have 
taken  him  for  one  of  the  hall  attendants. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "if  you  would  be  so  kind  as  to  take 
this  coat  to  my  brother,  to  Mr.  Trudeau  —  the  third 
one  from  the  left.  ...  He  did  n't  realize  the  hall  would 
be  so  draughty." 

Kenneth  took  the  coat  and  dropped  it  unostenta 
tiously  about  the  playwright's  thin  shoulders. 

"Oh,  thank  you!"  she  said  again,  this  time  with  a 
sense  of  the  enormity  of  her  proceeding,  due  to  her  dis 
covery,  as  he  stepped  into  the  full  light,  that  Kenneth 
was  not  an  attendant.  "My  brother's  health  is  so  pre 
carious,"  she  apologized.  And  then,  suddenly  struck 
with  Kenneth's  manner  which  was  hardly  that  of  a 
stranger,  "  You  know  him  ?  " 

"I  have  heard  of  him.  At  Miss  Burke's,"  he  added,  and 
thereby  acquired  merit,  for  it  was  evident  that  Virginia 
was  in  charge  of  the  evening. 

"Oh  —  "  she  began  to  say,  and  then,  "Hush,"  for  the 
meeting  was  about  to  begin.  She  was  full  of  a  quiet  kind 


240  THE  FORD 

of  excitement,  immensely  concerned  for  her  brother,  and 
yet  ready,  when  the  intervals  of  applause  permitted,  to  let 
shine  for  him  the  light  of  appreciation  which  sprang  from 
her  for  whatever  had  brushed,  even  with  the  wing's  tip, 
the  subject  of  Virginia. 

" You're  fortunate,  if  you're  a  friend,"  she  whispered, 
under  cover  of  the  storm  that  greeted  Virginia's  rising  to 
open  the  meeting. 

"  Quite  the  oldest  — "  He  smiled  down  at  her  enthusi 
asm. 

-'Ah — h!"  the  exclamation  died  down  for  Virginia's 
introduction  and  rose  again  at  the  end  of  it.  "Is  n't  she 
wonderful !  I  suppose  you '  ve  heard — "for  Virginia  had 
left  nothing  unsaid  about  the  playwright  and  his  connec 
tion  with  the  Democratic  Drama  except  her  personal 
relation  to  it.  Kenneth  signified  his  familiarity  with 
the  extent  to  which  Virginia  actually  did  figure  in  her 
brother's  play.  "It's  just  gorgeous  for  Andy  to  have  this 
opportunity  to  study  her,"  Andy's  sister  confided.  "He 
has  such  liberal  ideas  about  women.  But  mostly  the  types 
where  we  Ve  lived  have  been  such  frumpy,  so  —  bour- 
geoise."  The  word  which  circulated  so  freely  in  Vir 
ginia's  circle  came  a  little  hesitatingly  as  if  she  flinched 
before  its  possibly  injurious  import. 

"Where  you've  been  — "  Kenneth  began  to  question, 
and  then  covered  the  potential  impertinence  with  the 
first  thing  that  came  into  his  mind.  "Your  brother 
does  n't  look  in  the  least  foreign,"  he  explained. 

"Oh,  but  he  is  n't!  At  least,  not  for  a  hundred  years. 
We're  French  Huguenots,  I  believe  originally,  but  now 
we  are  just  Connecticut.  My  brother's  name  is  really 
Andrew;  he  took  the  French  form  for  —  commercial  rea- 


THE  FORD  241 

sons.  It  is  so  much  more  interesting."  She  took  this 
supposititious  demand  that  writers'  names  should  be  in 
teresting  with  the  same  simple  seriousness  with  which  her 
brother  publicly  accepted  his  rating  as  the  exponent  of 
Democratic  Drama.  Even  before  Virginia  found  them, 
at  the  end  of  the  meeting,  and  formally  introduced  him, 
Kenneth  had  decided  that  Ellis  Trudeau  was  a  nice  little 
thing. 

That  she  was  also  a  pretty  little  thing  did  not  occur 
to  him  until  Frank  had  spent  an  afternoon  at  the  studio 
and,  having  dismissed  Virginia's  high  color  and  vitality 
as  merely  continuing  her  claim  to  be  "as  good  a  looker  as 
ever,"  discovered  in  Miss  Trudeau  the  quality  of  unusual- 
ness.  Brent  observed  then  that  her  hair,  which  she  wore 
coiled  neatly  about  a  small  head,  was  the  color  of  Anne's, 
soft  ashy  brown,  but  in  place  of  Anne's  steady  blue  her 
eyes  were  pale  brown,  and  her  brows  had  a  winglike 
sweep  at  the  outer  corner.  Her  skin  was  colorless  rather 
than  pale  and  her  lips  not  red,  but  a  clear  rosy  pink, 
folded  and  thoughtful.  One  hardly  noticed  these  things, 
however,  in  Virginia's  presence  unless  attention  was  called 
to  them,  or  in  the  presence  of  her  brother.  She  was  so 
taken  up  with  that  gifted  pair,  with  observing  them  and 
admiring  them  and  making  sure  that  they  wanted  noth 
ing,  that  she  turned  the  attention  back  to  them  by  a 
kind  of  personal  refraction.  She  was  not  often  at  the 
studio,  but  always  when  Trudeau  addressed  meetings,  or 
when,  notebook  in  hand,  he  fluttered  in  the  wake  of  Vir 
ginia,  there  was  Ellis,  with  an  extraordinary  sensitiveness 
to  draughts  and  a  finality  on  the  subject  of  damp  pave 
ments  that  belied  her  promise  of  softness. 

Sometimes  before  or  after  meetings,  the  four  of  them 


242  THE  FORD 

would  go  up  the  hill  of  the  Square  to  eat  chop-suey  in  the 
teahouses  of  China  Town,  or,  somewhere  about  the  bor 
ders  of  the  Cove,  turn  into  one  of  those  Italian  places 
where  the  food  is  excellent  and  the  wine  execrable. 

Always  Virginia  played  to  them.  She  had  an  almost 
unlimited  capacity  for  keeping  the  game  going  and  for 
shaping  her  part  to  the  requirements  of  the  audience. 
What  the  part  was,  over  and  above  what  she  was  sup 
posed  to  stand  for  as  the  Friend  of  Labor,  was  the  Spirit 
of  the  West.  It  was  not  all  at  once  that  Kenneth  recog 
nized  it  as  such,  for  she  played  it  in  the  only  key  in  which 
the  Trudeaus  were  accustomed  to  see  it  manifest,  in  the 
key  of  Owen  Wister  and  the  Sunday  Supplements.  He 
would  break  in  upon  her  at  first,  not  as  to  matters  of  fact, 
for  Virginia  was  incorrigibly  honest  as  to  fact,  but  with 
some  notion  of  freeing  her  interpretation  of  life  at  Tierra 
Longa  from  a  swagger  foreign  to  the  spirit  in  which  it 
had  been  lived.  Presently  he  gave  over  such  attempts, 
discovering  that  to  the  Trudeaus  the  West,  stripped  of 
this  hand-woven  fabric  of  Romance,  bared  its  teeth.  Ex 
cept  they  could  see  it  in  the  color  of  literature,  they  were 
unable  to  see  what  endeared  it  to  him,  could  form  no 
notion,  from  the  little  they  did  see,  what  it  was  about. 
Almost  they  were  terrified  by  it,  as  he  could  recall  he  him 
self  had  been  when  —  once  while  he  and  Frank  had  been 
lost  for  a  whole  day,  hunting  in  the  Saltillos,  or  often  on 
his  lonely  walks  about  the  heights  above  Petrolia  —  the 
veil  of  familiar  use  had  dropped  and  left  him  face  to  face 
with  its  immensity,  its  immutable  purposes.  Confronted 
with  this  necessity  for  defining  the  West,  for  rendering  it 
intelligible,  he  fell  more  and  more  into  Virginia's  trick  of 
handling  it  in  the  terms  and  colors  of  fiction.  Once  he  had 


THE  FORD  243 

dipped  his  brush  in  that  medium,  he  recognized  it  for  the 
color  of  dreams  and  found  himself  suddenly  enriched  by 
the  possession. 

All  this  was  immensely  good  for  him.  He  began  to 
handle  the  stuff  of  his  own  life  and  pronounce  judgment 
on  it;  as  if,  where  it  had  been  but  clean  clay  and  water, 
he  could  see  it  now  as  the  material  from  which  vessels  are 
moulded.  Until  now  he  had  sat  where  many  young  men 
on  salaries  sit  for  the  whole  of  their  lives,  before  the  hu 
man  pageant  as  before  a  painted  picture.  He  had  admired 
the  picture  as  it  was  presented  to  him  in  books  and  on  the 
stage,  been  stirred  by  it.  Now  the  canvas  itself  stirred, 
the  tapestry  trees  waved  their  branches,  the  figures  moved 
in  and  out  under  them.  Times  when  he  and  Virginia 
would  sit  before  the  entranced  Trudeaus,  playing  each 
other  off  in  some  dramatic  recital  of  life  in  Palomitas,  he 
would  catch  himself  turning  quickly,  under  the  impression 
that  now  ...  at  a  word,  at  the  stretching  out  of  her 
hand  .  .  .  the  painted  surfaces  would  yield  .  .  .  they 
would  be  "in,"  gloriously  in  together.  And  always  after 
that  he  would  leave  her  with  a  sense  of  the  evening's 
being  suspended,  incomplete.  Gradually  he  came  to 
seek,  as  a  solution  for  this  delicate  bafflement,  the  pos 
sibility  that  Virginia  was  already  "  in  " ;  that  she  had  been 
by  some  gift  of  her  natural  constitution,  always  in  the 
picture,  and  that  the  demand  which  she  had  made  on  his 
adolescence  had  been  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  invita 
tion  to  him  to  come  in,  to  be  a  part  of  the  world-old  pag 
eant  and  the  show.  She  had  held  out  her  hand  to  him. 
.  .  .  Ah,  let  her  but  flutter  that  signal  again,  she  would 
find  what  she  would  find!  There  were  moments  when  it 
seemed  she  was  about  to  do  just  that,  and  drew  unac- 


244  THE  FORD 

countably  back  again.  One  night,  when  they  had  put 
the  Trudeaus  into  a  cab  at  Dupont  Street,  —  for  there 
was  a  wet  fog  trailing  up  and  down  the  streets  and 
Andre*  coughing  with  every  breath  of  it,  —  they  trudged 
down  the  Square  together,  past  the  fountain,  paused 
for  the  passing  salute  which  Virginia  would  insist  always 
upon  giving  it,  and  he  drew  the  hand  on  his  arm  into  his, 
drew  it  finally  across  his  breast  to  clasp  it  in  both  his  own 
with  gentle,  intermittent  pressure.  So  they  came  and 
stood  for  a  moment  at  the  bottom  of  the  dark  stair  which 
led  up  to  the  studio. 

"Oh,  Ken,"  she  half  laughed,  "why  weren't  you  al 
ways  like  this?" 

"Like  this?"  He  gave  her  a  little  pull  toward  him,  as 
though,  if  he  could  not  come  into  the  picture,  she  at  least 
should  come  out.  "Oh,  well," —  he  laughed  fully, — 
"give  a  man  a  chance  to  grow  up! "  He  was  feeling  par 
ticularly  grown  up,  full  of  a  fine  male  exultation  and  per 
fectly  sure  of  his  intention. 

"If  you  were  ...  if  you  really  were  ..."  She  panted  a 
little,  she  swung  him  about  by .  the  shoulders,  searching 
his  glance  by  what  light  there  was,  almost  with  despera 
tion,  then  suddenly,  by  one  of  her  swift  turns,  she  put  him 
from  her. 

"Boy  ...  oh,  Boy,  .  .  .  Good-night!" 

She  fled  up  the  stairs  away  from  him. 

He  recalled  this  incident  afterward  with  a  kind  of 
prideful  embarrassment.  He  had  meant,  he  had  surely 
meant,  to  kiss  her.  He  would  have  kissed  a  married 
woman!  For  Virginia,  in  spite  of  her  divorce  and  the  re 
taking  of  her  maiden  name,  was  technically  a  married 
woman  .  .  and  he  had  almost  kissed  her.  He  behaved 


THE  FORD  245 

himself  toward  her  for  the  next  few  days  with  great  cir 
cumspection  touched  with  extenuating  tenderness.  .  .  I 
She  was  Virginia,  of  course,  .  .  .  but  she  was  something 
more,  a  creature  of  experience,  the  mysterious  source 
and  occasion  of  "  situations." 

All  this  was  the  warp  and  woof  upon  which  was  em 
broidered  the  figure  of  Virginia  as  the  heroine  of  Demo 
cratic  Drama.  Under  the  influence  of  the  West,  and  the 
inspiration  of  Virginia  in  action,  the  play  went  forward 
leapingly.  There  was  constant  talk  now  of  a  " try-out" 
production  on  the  Coast  before  trusting  it  to  the  hazard 
of  Broadway.  Most  of  the  talk  about  it  was  too  much  in 
the  professional  patter  for  Kenneth  to  follow,  except  as 
it  reminded  him  of  the  talk  during  the  early  days  of 
Petrolia. 

They  would  sit,  as  Jim  Hand  and  Scudder  and  Sol- 
dumbehere  had  sat  around  the  table,  in  one  of  those  cafe's 
about  the  coasts  of  San  Francisco's  Little  Italy  where 
execrable  wine  is  balanced  by  an  excellent  cuisine,  talk 
ing,  talking  .  .  .  and  all  their  talk  was  tinged  as  that  other 
had  been  with  the  need,  the  inexorable  need,  and  the  im 
possibility  of  satisfying  from  any  known  source,  the  need 
of  Capital.  Committed  as  they  were  to  a  social  system 
that  would  forever  prohibit  the  formation  of  pools  and 
hidden  veins  of  wealth,  they  still  desperately  required, 
for  the  success  of  all  their  enterprises,  to  dip  them  in 
those  reservoirs.  Times  like  these,  Kenneth,  whose  mind 
had  swung  with  them  through  all  the  quarters  of  social 
reconstruction,  would  swing,  with  a  round  turn,  to  the 
side  of  the  Old  Man.  He  would  see,  in  a  flash,  Rickart 
and  his  kind  as  a  work  of  nature,  gigantic,  inevitable,  like 
the  epoch  which  stored  the  oil  under  Petrolia. 


246  THE  FORD 

They  were  sitting  so  in  the  upper  room  at  Campi's  a 
day  or  two  before  Christmas,  when,  in  response  to  some 
discussion  which  had  arisen,  the  tables  were  pushed  back, 
—  it  was  very  late  and  they  were  almost  in  full  possession 
of  the  restaurant,  —  for  Virginia  and  Andre*  to  play  out 
before  them  the  scene  which  terminated  the  second  act. 
Trudeau  could  n't  act,  and  had  the  sense  not  to  try,  but 
Virginia  dashed  through  the  part  of  the  heroine  with  a 
spirit  which,  considering  that  the  whole  scene  was  but  a 
shorthand  report  of  Virginia's  daily  performance,  was  not 
without  verisimilitude.  Through  the  round  of  applause 
which  followed,  —  for  by  this  time  the  audience  had  been 
augmented  by  the  waiters  and  the  half-dozen  remaining 
diners  who  had  felt  themselves  quite  free  of  whatever 
entertainment  was  offered,  —  somebody  could  be  heard 
triumphantly.  " There's  your  leading  lady,  Trudeau! 
She's  simply  made  for  it." 

"It  was  made  for  her"  the  playwright  admitted  hand 
somely. 

Virginia  included  them  all  in  the  modest  acknowledg 
ment  of  success. 

"Mr.  Brent  suggested  it  some  time  ago,"  she  confessed, 
' '  but  I  was  afraid  —  ' '  Renewed  hand-clapping  interrupted 
her.  She  came  directly  over  to  Kenneth,  taking  him  by 
the  elbow  in  a  way  she  had,  making  herself  altogether  of 
his  party.  "Of  course  it  would  save  expense,"  she  agreed 
with  the  air  of  being  willing  to  consider  it  with  him  from 
all  sides;  "we  have  to  think  of  that." 

It  appeared  from  this  that  the  plan  for  a  San  Fran 
cisco  try-out  was  much  farther  along  than  Kenneth  had 
imagined,  and  for  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  say  why  the 
plan  was  not  a  good  one,  except  as  he  had  a  notion  that 


THE  FORD  247 

what  Virginia  had  just  done  was  not  acting,  and  he  more 
than  suspected  that  Trudeau  could  not  write  a  play.  For 
he  had  not  wholly  accepted  the  current  explanation  of 
Trudeau's  failure  to  produce  anything  which  had  been 
professionally  accepted  as  such,  as  due  to  the  capitalistic 
influence  which  hung  like  the  traditional  millstone  about 
the  neck  of  American  Drama.  In  view  of  the  way  in  which 
Virginia  had  pulled  him  publicly  into  her  boat,  he  could 
not  very  well  explain  the  pure  mockery  of  his  original  sug 
gestion  that  she  should  play  the  part  for  which  she  had 
sat,  and  it  was  only  on  the  way  home,  that  Ellis  Trudeau 
aroused  him  to  the  extent  to  which  she  was  practically 
involved  by  it.  It  frequently  fell  out  that  he  walked  home 
with  Ellis  while  Virginia  was  taken  away  by  the  play 
wright,  always,  of  course,  in  the  interest  of  "copy";  an 
arrangement  with  which  Kenneth  could  have  found  no 
reasonable  fault,  except  for  a  suspicion  that  Miss  Tru 
deau  had  accepted  him,  not  so  much  in  order  to  enjoy 
his  company  as  to  afford  her  brother  uninterrupted  pos 
session  of  Virginia's. 

"You  think  it's  a  good  plan,  really?  I  mean  a  good 
business  plan?  Of  course  it  would  be  wonderful  anyway 
for  Andy  to  have  his  play  tried  out  at  a  real  theater,  but  I 
don't  want  him  to  do  it  this  way  if  it  is  n't  good  business." 

"You  mean  if  it  does  n't  pay  back  what  is  put  into  it? 
I'm  sure  I  don't  know,  but  there  ought  to  be  ways  of 
finding  out." 

"Could  n't  you  find  out?  Andy  is  n't  very  good  at  busi 
ness.  He  always  thinks  things  are  going  to  be  better  than 
they  turn  out.  Artists  are  that  way,"  she  stated  without 
bitterness.  "But,  you  see,  Virginia  has  done  so  much  for 
us  already." 


248  THE  FORD 

"  Virginia! " 

"If  she — capitalized  the — the  production,"  —  she  hes 
itated  over  the  professional  patter,  —  "I  should  n't  want 
her  to  lose  by  it.  When1she's  doing  so  much  for  us."  The 
speculations  which  this  innocent  statement  gave  rise  to, 
kept  Kenneth  silent,  and  presently  Miss  Trudeau  asked 
again  with  an  arresting  irrelevance,  "Do  you  think  your 
sister  could  tell?" 

"Anne!"  Kenneth  felt  that  he  was  not  sustaining  his 
end  of  the  conversation,  but  the  exclamation  was  of  sheer 
astonishment. 

"Yes.  That  nice  Mr.  Rickart  said  she  was  a  remarkable 
business  woman.  He  says  she  is  all  the  things  that  Vir 
ginia  and  —  the  others  —  spend  their  time  trying  to 
persuade  other  people  to  be.  I  should  so  like  to  meet 
her." 

"Oh,  well,"  —  Kenneth  laughed  tolerantly,  —  "old 
Frank  always  was  a  little  sweet  on  Anne.  She  'd  like  you, 
though;  she'd  have  you  down  at  Palomitas  the  first  rattle 
out  of  the  box."  He  drew  the  talk  off  in  that  direction 
until  he  could  account  for  the  queer  start  it  gave  him  to 
consider  just  what  was  the  "so  much"  that  Virginia  had 
been  doing  for  Andre"  Trudeau.  If  she  had  advanced  the 
money,  as  these  disclosures  seemed  to  indicate,  for  his 
visit  to  the  Coast,  and  if  she  really  meant  to  put  up 
money  for  the  play,  she  was  going  some.  He  reflected  that 
he  did  not  really  know  anything  about  how  the  Trudeaus 
lived  except  that  they  had  housekeeping  rooms  and  that 
Ellis's  time  seemed  to  be  largely  taken  up  with  the  care 
of  her  brother's  health  and  diet.  About  the  financing  of 
Democratic  Drama  he  really  knew  nothing,  though  he 
thought  Miss  Trudeau's  wish  that  Virginia  might  not  lose 


THE  FORD  249 

by  it  rather  fine;  and  he  resolved  in  his  mind  to  speak  to 
Frank  about  it  the  very  next  morning. 

He  had  been  shy  of  talking  with  Frank  of  his  new  in 
terests,  as  shy  as  he  had  been  of  all  that  had  lain  always 
at  the  back  of  his  mind  about  the  Old  Man.  Nobody 
would  have  been  more  surprised  than  Frank  to  learn  that 
there  were,  for  Kenneth,  two  distinct  figures  of  T.  Rick- 
art,  for  one  of  which  he  entertained  a  well-seasoned,  half- 
humorous  regard,  and  another  about  whom  his  thoughts 
revolved  in  cold  and  slowly  enlightened  speculation.  So 
far  this  double  perspective  had  not  flawed  his  young 
loyalty  to  Frank.  Brent's  failure  to  speak  freely  of  what 
had  come  to  him  through  the  renewal  of  acquaintance  with 
Cornelius  Burke's  daughter  really  was  due  to  the  realiza 
tion  that  she  was,  in  the  nature  of  things,  out  of  the  circle  of 
Frank's  social  interests.  But  on  the  subject  of  Virginia's 
projected  invasion  of  the  professional  stage,  Kenneth 
thought  he  could  appeal  to  his  friend  as  a  patron  of  the 
drama,  whatever  drama  was  available  in  San  Francisco. 
Better  than  any  one  of  Kenneth's  acquaintance,  Frank 
would  know  whether  what  was  in  the  air  was  the  sort  of 
thing  that  Virginia's  friends  would  wish  for  her.  And 
Frank  emphatically  thought  it  was  n't. 

It  is  true  that  Frank's  ideas  on  the  subject  were  more 
or  less  confused  with  impressions  of  the  type  of  actress 
whose  photograph  is  of tenest  seen  on  the  front  page  of  the 
ten-cent  magazines;  and  the  histrionic  gift  was  by  asso 
ciation  identified  with  a  kind  of  provocation  which  the 
daughter  of  his  father's  former  superintendent  pointedly 
did  n't  have  for  him.  As  for  the  exponent  of  Democratic 
Drama,  Frank  had  not  been  favorably  impressed  by  him. 

"That  chap  with  the  sister  .  .  .  quaint  little  thing, 


250  THE  FORD 

is  n't  she?  Reminds  me  of  Anne,  sort  of.  Chap  looks  like 
a  lunger.  No  pep  to  him.  That 's  what  a  playwright  has 
to  have  these  days;  pep  and  punch.  Besides,  you  can't 
make  a  play  out  of  labor  unions;  they're  not  dramatic." 

Kenneth  would  have  disputed  this;  there  was  Haupt- 
mann's  " Weavers."  Rebecca  Lovinsky  had  recently 
given  it  to  him  to  read. 

"Ever  heard  of  it  on  Broadway?"  Frank  demanded. 
"Well,  there  you  are.  ...  I  tell  you  you  have  to  have 
heart  interest  ..." 

Frank  waived  the  discussion  of  the  larger  aspects  of 
drama  to  come  back  to  the  personal  instance.  "Virginia 
ought  n't  to  get  too  thick  with  that  Trudeau  fellow;  looks 
to  me  like  one  of  these  decadents."  Neither  Frank  nor 
Kenneth  was  quite  sure  what  this  implied,  but  it  sounded 
knowing.  "Virginia  thinks  every  sort  of  animal  is  a 
parlor  pet  until  she  gets  bitten.  Tell  her  to  look  a  little 
out." 

This  being  the  sort  of  thing  it  was  fatal  to  tell  Vir 
ginia,  Kenneth  resolved  to  do  the  looking  out  himself. 
He  had  a  healthy  male  prejudice  against  a  man's  taking 
support  from  a  woman.  The  suggestion  that  Trudeau  was 
financially  dependent  on  Virginia — and  it  accounted  too 
aptly  for  the  discrepancies  between  Virginia's  known  in 
come  and  her  way  of  living  to  be  easily  dismissed  — 
brought  a  touch  of  contempt  to  the  feeling  with  which  he 
was  beginning  to  regard  the  playwright.  He  found  him 
self  sniffing  the  other's  words  for  that  faint  odor  of  de 
cadence  which  Frank  had  hinted  at;  it  seemed  to  him  that 
he  had  been  missing  the  full  significance  of  much  that  was 
going  on  under  his  eyes. 

Kenneth's  own  ideas  about  women  had  been  strongly 


THE  FORD  251 

tinged  with  that  Americanism  which  is  nearly  Oriental 
in  its  insistence  on  keeping  them  a  race  apart.  They  ex 
isted  for  him  in  two  tribes  of  good  and  bad,  in  the  first  of 
which  were  enthroned  all  those  who  could  possibly  be 
thought  of  as  touching  his  own  life.  He  had  not,  however, 
lived  six  years  in  San  Francisco  without  realizing  some 
thing  of  the  ease  and  the  occasions  by  which  the  line  could 
be  crossed;  he  had  even  been  made  to  feel,  through  the 
talk  that  cropped  up  in  the  office  between  Frank  and 
other  rich  men's  sons,  that  the  lines  were  uncomfortably 
close.  He  knew,  for  instance,  that  there  was  an  address 
in  Alameda,  known  only  to  Straker,  the  firm's  senior  at 
torney,  at  which  the  Old  Man  could  be  found  in  emergen 
cies,  and  he  recalled,  with  rather  a  burning  sensation,  the 
incident  of  a  certain  canary-blonde  stenographer  who  for 
a  brief  three  weeks  or  so  had  held  the  corner  desk  of  T. 
Rickart  and  Company's  outer  office.  She  was  a  Santa 
Rosa  girl  and  this  had  been  her  first  city  employment. 
It  was  to  simple  gaucherie  that  he  had  attributed  a  cer 
tain  trick  she  had  of  putting  down  his  mail  over  his  shoul 
der  so  that  her  hand  dragged  the  lapels  of  his  coat,  and 
the  obvious  invitation  of  her  banter  with  young  McRae, 
of  Dent,  McRae  and  Company,  who  frequently  dropped 
in  to  sit  on  Frank's  desk  and  discuss  " skirts"  and  polo. 
He  had  even  put  his  clean  young  interpretations  of  the 
girl  into  the  form  of  a  remonstrance  to  McRae,  having 
seen  them  dining  together  once  or  twice  at  public  restau 
rants,  to  that  young  gentleman's  great  entertainment. 
His  "Oh,  come  now,  Brent,  a  slice  out  of  a  cut  loaf  - 
had  barely  been  swallowed  by  Kenneth,  being  seasoned 
with  wholly  irresponsible  Irish  laughter;  and  then  one 
day  he  had  come  into  the  office  to  find  the  girl  with  her 


252  THE  FORD 

skirt  caught  up  on  a  nail  as  she  tiptoed  on  a  high  stool 
to  reach  a  row  of  office  files,  disclosing  a  surprising  length 
of  stocking.  She  had,  in  truth,  recovered  herself  with 
commendable  modesty,  but  not  before  Brent  had  had 
time  to  be  struck  with  the  more  amazing  revelation  of  the 
quality  of  the  exhibition.  He  knew  what  silk  stockings 
cost;  Anne  was  rather  partial  to  them;  she  had  said  that 
she  would  know  when  she  was  rich  enough  when  she  could 
afford  to  wear  them  every  day;  he  had  just  made  her  a 
present  of  a  box  for  her  birthday  .  .  .  and  the  stenogra 
pher,  at  twelve  dollars  per,  was  wearing  silk  stockings! 

Kenneth  was  not  a  fool;  therefore  it  was  a  relief  to  him, 
after  a  week  or  ten  days'  absence  from  the  office,  to  find 
that  the  canary-blonde  had  been  superseded  by  a  brunette 
in  spectacles,  and  when  he  ran  onto  them  later  dining  at 
the  Cliff  House,  neither  McRae  nor  the  girl  noticed  him. 

Now  at  Frank's  suggestion  that  Virginia  ought  to  look 
out  a  little  for  Andre"  Trudeau,  Kenneth  experienced 
something  of  that  sense  of  affronted  confidence  with 
which  this  incident  was  always  associated.  If  the  play 
wright  had,  under  cover  of  the  gospel  of  democracy,  crept 
into  his  own  and  Virginia's  grace,  with  any  suspicion  of 
sliminess,  it  was  Kenneth's  part  as  the  long  established 
friend  to  be  the  first  to  fix  and  repudiate  it. 


VII 

LOOKING  out  for  Virginia  in  connection  with  the  prophet 
of  Democratic  Drama  was  by  no  means  the  simple  mat 
ter  of  precaution  that  it  sounded.  Kenneth's  first  effort 
in  that  direction  was  to  put  the  case  to  Anne  on  the  occa 
sion  of  her  Christmas  visit.  Originally  she  had  planned 
to  have  her  brother  at  Palomitas;  but  it  was  character 
istic  of  Anne  always  to  keep  well  within  her  capacity. 
Anne  could  manage  a  household  with  the  same  clear  con 
fidence  with  which  she  handled  her  real-estate  business; 
as  a  mother  of  twelve  she  would  have  been  notable,  but 
she  quailed  before  the  feminine  necessity  of  keeping  her 
father's  first  Christmas  at  Palomitas  free  from  reminders 
of  his  widowed  condition.  So  they  made  three  days  of 
their  holiday  and  spent  two  of  them  buying  cultivators 
and  alfalfa  seed.  Incidentally  Anne  found  time  to  insist 
to  her  brother  that  Virginia's  dramatic  adventures  were 
none  of  their  business. 

" There's  no  reason  why  Virginia  shouldn't  put  her 
money  into  a  play  the  same  as  into  an  oil  company.  I 
understand  that  some  plays  are  very  good  investments. 
And  if  she  spends  her  income  on  Mr.  Trudeau,  that's  her 
affair  also.  She  probably  would  n't  do  it  if  she  was  n't 
getting  something  out  of  it." 

"I  don't  see  what  she  can  expect  to  get  from  a  chap  like 
Trudeau.  Unless  you  mean  she  expects  to  marry  him." 

"Goodness,  Ken,  what  an  old  maid  you  are!  Do  you 
really  think  marriage  is  the  only  thing  women  want  from 
men?" 


254  THE  FORD 

"I  don't  know  what  else  she  can  get  that  would  justify 
her  spending  her  money  on  him."  It  was  really  shocking 
the  way  Anne  talked;  if  you  did  n't  know  her  very  well 
you  might  think  — 

"It's  a  matter  of  values,"  Anne  interrupted  him. 
"Women  l\ave  always  had  a  different  set  of  values  from 
men.  But  I  don't  see  why  they  should  n't  assert  their 
right  to  what  they  value  at  the  market  price  ...  if  they 
have  the  price." 

"You  mean  you  think  it  all  right  for  a  woman  to  — 
to  pay  a  man  for  —  for  — " 

"For  dramatizing  her  life  for  her?  I  don't  see  why  not. 
Men  have  always  paid  women  for  the  same  sort  of  thing 
.  .  .  being  an  inspiration  to  them,  don't  they  call  it?  I 
should  n't  wonder  if  there  are  women  who  have  done  that, 
too,  though  maybe  they  don't  talk  about  it." 

He  should  think  not!  A  wave  of  his  old  fierce  desire 
that  Anne  should  have  a  husband,  and  that  he  should 
beat  her,  surged  over  Kenneth.  It  was  intolerable  that  a 
woman  should  talk  so  about  men  —  as  though  to  serve 
the  needs  of  women  were  one  of  the  things  for  which  they 
had  been  expressly  created. 

"You  don't  know  anything  about  men,"  he  told  her 
angrily. 

"Maybe  not,"  Anne  agreed  amiably;  "but  I  know 
three,  anyway,  and  I  know  a  lot  about  women." 

Afterward  it  occurred  to  Kenneth  to  wonder  who  the 
third  man  could  be.  Himself  and  his  father  were  two,  of 
course,  and  the  other  —  yes,  it  must  be  old  Frank.  Anne 
could  always  do  exactly  what  she  liked  with  old  Frank.  In 
view  of  the  brilliant  match  it  would  be,  he  wondered  why 
she  had  n't  done  the  obvious  thing  and  had  him  marry  her. 


THE  FORD  255 

Somehow  with  those  two  it  would  have  to  be  obvious; 
you  could  never  think  of  old  Frank  and  Anne  ensnared 
in  that  warm,  delicate  web  which  —  well,  which  might  so 
easily  be  spun  between  himself  and  Virginia.  And  yet 
Frank  would  have  married  Anne  like  a  shot  if  she  had 
told  him  he  ought  to.  At  least  he  would  before  a  certain 
Miss  Rutgers  of  New  York  appeared  upon  the  scene. 
Could  it  be  that  there  were  really  women  who  did  n't  care 
for  marriage,  with  whom  it  was  not  a  mere  courageous 
pretence  that  they  liked  to  knock  about  and  do  things? 
He  tried  to  get  a  line  on  Virginia,  as  far  as  he  might,  by 
getting  a  line  on  his  sister  from  her  friend. 

"I  used  to  think  she  and  Frank  would  hit  it  off,"  he 
confessed  diplomatically;  " Frank's  awfully  fond  of  her.'7 

"Oh,  yes,  he's  fond  of  her."  There  was  always  a  touch 
of  professional  antagonism  in  all  Virginia's  references  to 
the  heir  of  T.  Rickart. 

"You  don't  suppose  there  has  been  anybody  else, 
anybody  Anne  herself  was  fond  of  who  sort  of  —  disap 
pointed  her?" 

"Well,  Kenneth  Brent,  do  you  think  I'd  tell  you!" 

"She'd  tell  me  about  you  fast  enough!  She'd  know 
that  I  would  really  be  interested,"  he  hastened  to  add. 

"She  would  n't!  Would  n't  tell,  I  mean.  Anne  would 
dissect  me  all  to  pieces  the  way  she  does  everybody,  but 
she  would  n't  tell  you  one  single  little  fact  that  she  thought 
I  did  n't  want  you  to  know."  Virginia  was  magnificent. 

"Well,  I  don't  see  why  she  should  mind  my  knowing; 
after  all,  she's  my  sister." 

"If  somebody  she  cared  for  had  disappointed  her- 
if  he  had  n't  even  seen?  Of  course  she  'd  mind.  If  there 's 
anything  Anne  wants  you  to  know  she  '11  tell  you  herself." 


256  THE  FORD 

Kenneth  reflected  on  the  amazing  certainty  women 
had  about  their  own  kind.  Look  at  the  way  Anne  and 
Ellis  Trudeau  had  taken  to  each  other!  For  among  the 
results  of  Anne's  visit  had  been  the  one  that  Kenneth  had 
foreseen;  within  an  hour  of  knowing  her  she  had  invited 
Ellis  to  Palomitas. 

Abandoned  by  his  sister  in  his  fine  young  resolution  to 
stand  between  Virginia  and  the  tainted  weather  of  the 
Cove,  Kenneth  had  to  fall  back  on  the  playwright's  own 
utterances  and  Rebecca  Lovinsky,  one  of  those  curious 
types  whose  souls  are  snared  in  the  raveled  fringe  of  art, 
from  which  no  single  shred  of  its  creative  spirit  redeems 
them. 

Miss  Lovinsky  was  a  purveyor  of  book  news  and  re 
views,  writing  about  writing,  deriving  a  kind  of  literary 
sanction  from  the  process  of  laying  one  gift  alongside  an 
other  and  comparing  their  breadth  and  thickness.  Miss 
Lovinsky  was  consumed  with  the  desire  to  become  the 
nurse  and  inspiration  of  a  work  of  distinction,  and  her 
notion  of  accomplishing  such  for  Andre"  Trudeau  con 
sisted  in  sitting  before  every  word  of  his,  as  it  were  with 
the  tongue  of  her  mind  hanging  out,  and  to  all  he  said 
yelping,  "Yes,  yes!"  so  passionately  that  Kenneth  felt 
like  nothing  so  much  as  taking  her  paws  on  his  knees  and 
stroking  her  ears.  «  j 

It  was  to  Miss  Lovinsky  that  Trudeau  had  largely  given 
over  the  business  at  which  Kenneth  had  first  discovered 
him,  of  plucking  veils  from  between  his  audience  and  the 
thing  he  had  in  his  mind  to  say.  Like  many  another  un 
ready  talker,  he  depended  upon  women  so  to  dispose  the 
drapery  of  his  thought  about  him  that  they,  at  least, 
gave  him  credit  for  what  he  would  like  to  have  said. 


THE  FORD  257 

And  it  was  Miss  Lovinsky  who,  more  than  anybody  else, 
plucked  all  reticences  from  the  sort  of  thing  that  in  Ken 
neth's  opinion  threatened  Virginia's  niceness. 

Next  to  the  patter  of  Labor  and  Capitalism,  in  a  gelid 
solution  of  which  Virginia's  friends  lived  and  moved,  no 
word  was  so  tossed  about  among  them  as  the  name  of 
Freedom.  It  passed  from  hand  to  hand  like  a  crystal  ball 
which  nobody  could  quite  see  through  or  very  far  into ; 
and  when  Virginia  caught  it  in  her  turn,  sending  it  high 
on  her  fine,  flushed  enthusiasms,  he  had  no  doubt  of  the 
crystal  quality  of  what  she  handled.  But  when  Miss 
Lovinsky  snatched  it,  she  was  forever  giving  it  ineffectual 
dabs  at  somebody's  coat  or  skirt,  to  clear  its  smooth  sur 
faces,  dulled  by  too  much  handling.  And  by  the  very 
coats  and  skirts  she  chose,  revealed  specific  violations  of 
much  more  than  the  liberty  Virginia  had  elected  for  her 
self  by  wearing  queer  clothes  and  talking  of  just  whatever 
came  into  her  head  as  if  there  were  no  reason  on  earth 
why  she  should  n't  talk  of  it. 

Art,  it  appeared,  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  Cove,  was  the 
product  of  Self -Realization,  from  which  it  followed,  hi 
the  course  of  much  tossing  to  and  fro,  that  for  all  True 
Realization  there  must  be  Freedom.  This  was  Miss  Lovin- 
sky's  cue  for  wanting  to  know  whether  women  had  never 
been  truly  great  in  Art  because  they  had  never  been  truly 
Free. 

"They  have  been  great  on  the  stage/'  the  playwright 
would  remind  her;  and  Miss  Lovinsky  would  yelp, 
"True,  true!" 

On  the  stage,  it  was  conceded,  woman  had  asserted 
her  right  to  herself,  she  had  cast  off  the  shackles  of  con 
vention,  she  had  been  Free. 


258  THE  FORD 

"  What  you  say  is  so  True/'  murmured  Miss  Lovinsky. 

"Even  in  my  little  experience/'  —  Virginia  would 
hesitate  prettily  for  the  general  commendation  of  her 
modesty,  —  "I  feel  how  true  it  is  that,  for  the  woman 
who  uses  her  personality  as  the  medium  of  her  expres 
sion,  the  great  necessity  is  Freedom." 

"She  must"  -the  playwright  laid  down  as  an  axiom 
—  "  regard  the  achievement  of  that  freedom  as  her  Con 
tribution  to  the  Race." 

"She  must  enrich  her  personality/'  Miss  Lovinsky 
solemnly  agreed;  "she  must  eliminate  as  a  sacred  obliga 
tion  everything  which  impedes  the  full  development  of 
her  Ego."  Sometimes  she  said  that,  and  at  others  she 
offered  the  bit  about  the  Contribution  to  the  Race,  and 
it  was  the  playwright  who  laid  down  the  sacred  obliga 
tion. 

Nothing  was  further  from  Kenneth  than  to  imagine 
that  Trudeau  and  Miss  Lovinsky  had  taken  for  them 
selves  any  of  the  liberties  with  life  and  behavior  which 
their  talk  condoned  in  conspicuous  members  of  the  con 
fraternity  of  art  and  social  science.  What  he  really  feared 
was  that,  as  the  crystal  flashed,  Virginia  might  have  a 
glimpse  of  things  which  it  is  against  every  code  of  nice- 
ness  that  young  women  shall  see.  What  he  thought  he 
feared  in  her  connection  with  "The  Battle,"  under  which 
name  the  Democratic  Drama  was  to  be  introduced  to  San 
Francisco,  was  that  she  should  be  publicly  seen  in  juxta 
position  to  things  which  would  invalidate  the  claim  to 
niceness  which  every  instinct  in  him  set  up  on  her  behalf. 

In  Nature's  whole  bag  of  tricks,  nothing  is  prettier  than 
this  impulse  to  bestow  on  the  object  of  our  interest  all  the 
enhancing  virtues;  and  on  the  whole  nothing  is  sounder 


THE  FORD  259 

than  the  instinct  of  young  women  to  wear  with  grace  the 
qualities  in  which  they  find  themselves  tricked  out  to 
advantage.  But  Kenneth  had  not  played  with  girls 
enough  to  remember  that  the  thing  that  was  logically  ex 
pected  of  her  was  just  the  thing  that  Virginia  could  n't 
be  expected  to  do.  He  went  so  far  out  of  his  way  to  find  an 
occasion  for  warning  her  against  a  too  public  identifica 
tion  of  her  interests  with  Trudeau's,  that  he  gave  her  time 
to  approach  the  subject  first  and  with  her  mind  already 
made  up. 

Almost  the  only  professional  recognition  young  Brent 
had  had  from  Miss  Burke  was  the  readiness  with  which, 
when  she  found  herself  in  need  of  professional  service, 
she  expected  him  to  render  it  on  the  same  basis  on  which 
everything  else  in  their  long  acquaintance  had  been  ren 
dered.  It  fell  out  quite  naturally  that  she  should  give  him, 
early  in  January,  a  commission  to  sell  some  of  her  Petrolia 
oil  stock  in  the  open  market.  About"three  thousand  dol 
lars'  worth,  she  thought.  Not  that  they  meant  to  put  so 
much  into  the  initial  production,  but  it  would  be  a 
pity,  —  did  n't  he  think?  —  if  the  play  showed  signs  of 
catching  on,  to  have  it  fail  for  want  of  a  little  extra 
backing. 

"Then  you  really  are  going  on  with  it?" 
"My  dear  Ken,  I  thought  you  suggested  it!" 
"Your  acting  in  it."  He  really  had  never  had  the  cour 
age  to  tell  her  that  he  had  n't  expected  to  have  his  sug 
gestion  taken  seriously.   "But  isn't  that  enough?  Put 
ting  yourself  into  it,  I  mean,  without  putting  in  your 
money?" 

"Oh,  but  if  it  is  worth  myself,"  she  triumphed,  "is  n't 
it  so  much  more  worth  money?" 


260  THE  FORD 

"Only,  if  it's  a  failure/ '  —  he  put  it  to  her,  —  "you 
can  take  yourself  back,  but  you  can't1  take  your  money 
back." 

"Why  should  I  want  it  back  —  if  it  helps  the  Cause 
the  way  I  think  'The  Battle'  is  going  to  help  it?  I  can't 
take  back  what  I  put  into  the  shirt-waist  strike  last  win 
ter,  but  you  have  n't  heard  me  say  I  want  it  back,  have 
you?"  She  sailed  far  over  him;  he  cast  about  for  some 
thing  to  bring  her  to  earth  again. 

"But  aren't  there  managers  who  put  on  plays  and 
back  them?  I  always  thought  it  was  a  regular  business 
— "he  groped. 

"It  is,"  she  agreed.  "A  capitalist's  business.  That's 
why  plays  like  this  one  — " 

He  saw  they  should  never  get  anywhere  in  that  direc 
tion.  Once  Virginia  sniffed  the  wind  of  industrial  con 
flict,  she  would  have  cast  into  the  ring  the  last  shred  of 
that  comfortable  cloak  of  vested  capital  in  which  Cor 
nelius  had  wrapped  her. 

Kenneth  ventured  once  more,  and  more  successfully, 
with  the  personal  argument. 

"You  mean  you  don't  want  me  to  have  this  play?" 
She  puzzled  over  his  remonstrance.  She  had  been  so  sure 
of  him;  so  full  of  a  sense  of  the  play's  importance,  of  the 
completeness  of  her  whole  performance,  herself  the  in 
spiration,  the  backer  of  the  play,  and  its  vivid  exponent. 

"I  mean  I  don't  like  the  idea  of  your  being  so  mixed  up 
with  this  Andre*  Trudeau,  acting  in  his  play  and  financing 
him  —  and  —  everything."  He  finished  weakly. 

He  was  pacing  up  and  down  in  her  studio,  as  he  talked, 
and  Virginia  in  her  swift,  fearless  way  came  straight  at 
him.  She  had  on  one  of  her  loose  silken  pinafores  of 


THE  FORD  261 

wisteria  silk  with  touches  of  bright  cerise  that  matched 
the  red  of  her  bitten  lip  and  the  sudden  flag  that  fluttered 
in  her  cheek. 

"I  don't  understand  what  you  mean  —  '  every  thing. ": 

"Well,  you  don't  know  much  about  him,"    -Ken 
neth  had  already  heard  from  Ellis  how  much  she  knew,  - 
"and  he  is  n't  —  that  is,  his  views  are  n't  the  kind  that 
—  that  —  well,  you   know  they  are  n't  the  views  of 
people  generally." 

"I  thought  there  were  a  good  many  of  them  your  views. 
But  I  know  what  you  mean,  you  mean  his  views  on  per 
sonal  freedom  ...  on  the  freedom  of  love." 

"People  might  think  you  agreed  with  him"  -Ken 
neth  hastened  to  get  it  out  —  "if  you  were  associated 
with  him  in  business."  He  breathed  easier,  feeling  that 
they  were  past  the  worst. 

But  Virginia  was  by  no  means  past  it.  She  stood  work 
ing  one  hand  in  the  other,  her  foot  lightly  tapping. 

"Oh,  they  might  think  I  agreed  with  him,  might  they? 
Well,  would  it  surprise  you,  Kenneth  Brent,  to  know  that 
I  do  agree  with  him?  I  agree  with  him  perfectly  /" 

"Oh,  I  say,  Virginia— " 

Really,  somebody  who  has  the  interest  of  the  feminist 
movement  at  heart  ought  to  think  out  a  formula  by  which 
an  earnest  young  man  can  readily  convey  to  an  equally 
earnest  young  woman  that,  while  he  knows,  of  course,  that 
she  means  absolutely  everything  she  says,  he  knows  at 
the  same  time  that  she  does  n't  mean  anything.  And  yet 
it  must  be  a  situation  frequently  cropping  up  in  these 
days  when  young  women  are  nothing  if  not  earnest.  It 
must,  to  judge  from  the  ensuing  remark,  have  cropped  up 
in  Virginia's  experience  a  sufficient  number  of  times  for 


262  THE  FORD 

her  to  be  ready  with  the  best  substitute  for  the  formula 
in  general  circulation. 

"I  know  what  you  are  going  to  say,"  she  forestalled 
him;  "you  are  going  to  say  that  it  is  not  what  I  think 
about  such  things  that  matters,  it's  what  people  will 
think  about  me  for  thinking  them!" 

This  was  so  exactly  what  he  had  been  trying  to  avoid 
saying,  that  for  the  moment  Kenneth  said  nothing,  and 
when  at  last  he  did  venture  found  he  had  but  blown  her 
strangely  flaming  anger. 

"You  know  what  people  are,"  he  extenuated. 

"Yes,  I  know.  There  are  lots  of  them  who  would  n't 
care  at  all  for  my  thinking  it,  if  only  I  did  n't  say  it,  and 
there  are  more  who  would  n't  mind  its  being  said  if  only 
I  stopped  at  saying.  But  there  are  n't  any  of  them  would 
forgive  me  if  they  thought  I  was  honest  enough  in  what  I 
said  to  live  it." 

Yes,  certainly  the  advocates  of  the  New  Womanhood 
have  been  neglectful  in  not  providing  a  formula.  How  on 
earth  is  a  thoroughly  nice  young  man  to  explain  to  a  young 
woman  that  nothing,  not  even  the  degree  of  honesty  im 
plicit  in  her  living  up  to  her  Sacred  Obligation  of  Freedom, 
can  assail  his  belief  in  her  niceness?  After  several  fruitless 
attempts  Kenneth  fell  back  on  the  one  certain  note  with 
Virginia,  her  natural  concern  for  others. 

"Think  how  your  friends  would  feel,  having  you  mis 
understood  .  .  .  think  how  I  should  feel." 

"Oh,  you ! "  She  moved  away  from  him  with  one  of  those 
explicit  native  gestures  which  their  childhood  had  caught 
from  Ignacio  Stanislauo,  a  gesture  in  which  the  tossed 
palm  and  a  light  puff  of  the  breath  says  much  better  than 
many  words,  that  the  wind  of  our  adversity  will  divide  the 


THE  FORD  263 

grain  of  our  friends  from  the  chaff.  A  gesture  which,  be 
sides  being  expressive,  is,  at  the  hands  of  a  pretty  young 
woman  in  a  wisteria  silk  pinafore  rather  severe  treatment 
for  a  young  man  who  is  moved  at  the  moment  by  nothing 
so  much  as  a  proper  male  protectiveness. 

"Of  course,  I  know  liking  and  respecting  you  does  n't 
entitle  me  to  anything  -  "  he  began,  injuredly  aloof. 

"Oh,"  she  flung  out,  "liking  —  liking  and  respect! 
You  think  that's  all  a  woman  needs  ...  to  be  liked  and 
respected,  and  to  wait  .  .  .  wait  .  .  .  until  some  man  gets 
done  fussing  about  and  finding  what  he  likes,  what  he 
wants  to  do  and  can  make  of  his  life  .  .  .  and  then  comes 
and  invites  her  into  it! 

"And  she  is  n't  supposed  to  have  any  feelings  while  she 
waits,  nor  to  make  anything  of  her  life  .  .  .  nor  to  change, 
nor  to  think  .  .  .  and  all  she  gets  out  of  it  is  to  be  liked  and 
respected!" 

She  came  toward  him  again  with  such  an  impetus  that 
he  caught  himself  back-stepping  to  avoid  her,  and  in 
voluntarily  put  out  his  hand  so  that  she  came  to  rest 
against  it,  her  soft  bosom  panting  under  its  thin  silk  as 
though  for  the  moment  she  had  offered  it  in  confirmation 
of  her  protest. 

He  was  immeasurably  moved,  beyond  his  young  embar 
rassment,  by  the  vehemence  of  her  outbreak,  a  vehemence 
which  under  his  hand  grew  quieter  and  gained  in  intensity. 

"Don't  you  ever  say  things  like  that  to  me,  Kenneth, 
don't  you  .  .  .  Have  n't  I  always  been  the  kind  of  girl  who 
could  be  liked  and  respected?  And  what  did  I  get  for  it? 
.  .  .  My  own  kitchenmaid!  .  .  .  Do  you  suppose  women 
are  going  on  making  good  .  .  .  and  nothing,  nothing  cer 
tain  in  return!" 


264  THE  FORD 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  ever  spoken  to  him  di 
rectly  of  her  trouble,  but  before  he  could  find  the  thing 
to  say  she  had  moved  away  from  him  with  a  dignity  that 
touched  the  quick  of  his  new  perception  of  her  as  the 
vehicle  of  inestimable  experience.  He  was  moved  by  a 
remorseful  sense  of  the  waste  of  her  treasure  of  young 
womanhood  —  pricked  by  some  sense  of  the  slight  im 
plied  in  our  traditional  setting  of  it  aside,  like  a  flower 
in  a  vase  —  conscious  of  inadequacy. 

"It  isn't  true,"  she  said,  "that  women  are  like  that 
...  it  is  n't  true,  Kenneth.  They  can't  just  wait  .  .  .  and 
wait.  If  they  seem  so,  they  are  most  of  them  pretending 
.  .  .  and  there  are  some  of  them  too  honest  to  pretend." 
She  dropped,  spent  with  the  energy  of  protest  on  the  low 
couch  which  ran  along  one  wall  of  the  studio;  her  wrung 
hands  stretched  across  the  cushions. 

He  went  to  her  in  a  swift  movement  of  contrition  for 
all  the  things  that  women  suffer  at  the  hands  of  men. 

' You  mustn't  take  things  so  hard,  Virginia, — 
things,  I  say."  He  wanted  desperately  to  convey  to  her 
something  of  his  newly  awakened  sense  of  personal  blame 
for  the  wastage  of  her  loveliness,  but  nothing  better  oc 
curred  to  him  than  to  draw  her  locked  hands  upon  his 
knee  and  delicately  to  stroke  the  warm  inner  surface  of 
her  arm  where  the  blue  vein  ran  into  the  curve  of  the  el 
bow.  "You  must  n't  think  I  want  you  to  pretend,  ever ! " 
he  assured  her. 

"Oh,  yes,  you  will,  Ken;  there's  nobody  who  will  want 
so  much  pretending  as  you."  She  laughed  a  little  as  if  to 
cover  the  recollection  of  her  outbreak.  "I  don't  suppose 
a  woman  really  minds  pretending  if  she  gets  something 
out  of  it." 


THE  FORD  265 

Kenneth,  not  knowing  quite  what  was  expected  of  him, 
and  moved  by  more  things  than  he  could  easily  name,  re 
mained  quietly  stroking  her  arm. 

Presently  she  drew  it  from  him. 

"If  you  were  to  offer  that  stock  in  Summerfield,  you 
ought  to  get  at  least  three  thousand  for  it." 

"At  least  that,"  he  agreed  with  her. 


VIII 

THE  taking  of  Anne  and  Ellis  Trudeau  to  each  other  had 
been  like  the  joining  of  streams  on  the  slope  of  the  Torr ' ; 
a  flash  between  the  willows,  a  riffle  of  foam  —  and  there 
were  those  two  setting  out  for  the  ploughed  fields  as  if 
they  had  always  known  they  should  do  just  this  and  no 
other.  As  pretty  as  that  and  much  quicker. 

The  acquaintance  had  begun  at  the  Studio  where  Vir 
ginia  had  invited  them  all  in  for  a  dinner  which  had  been 
sent  in  "hot  and  hot"  from  Campi's.  Anne  had  put  up 
an  umbrella  against  the  rain  of  suggestion  as  to  where, 
and  in  pursuit  of  what  entertainment,  she  should  spend 
the  three  days  of  her  holiday. 

"I've  a  week's  shopping  to  do,"  she  protested.  "You 
forget  I  'm  a  rancher,  or  at  least  that  I  'm  living  with  one. 
Father  needs  a  guardian  when  he  gets  among  gardening 
requisites;  he  always  wants  all  of  them." 

"I  recommend  you  to  turn  all  that  over  to  my  sister," 
Trudeau  contributed;  "she's  farmed  all  the  best  cata 
logues  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and  1 11  guarantee  that 
she  can  lead  you  to  the  nearest  nurseryman's  by  the  sixth 
sense  only." 

Steven  Brent  turned  on  her  with  one  of  his  rare  smiles 
out  of  the  ambush  of  his  beard. 

"If  you  are  addicted  to  the  pleasant  vice  of  catalogue 
farming,  Miss  Trudeau,"  he  said,  "I  shall  be  pleased  to 
have  you  with  me.  When  my  daughter  buys  she  buys  ex 
actly  what  she  wants  and  that  is  the  end  of  it;  she  knows 
nothing  of  the  delights  of  indecision." 


THE  FORD  267 

"  You  wait  until  I  get  my  hat,"  —  Ellis  rose  to  him. 

Anne,  looking  at  her  directly  for  the  first  time,  caught 
the  flash  of  an  equal  spirit. 

"If  you  know  what  you  want  to  do  as  promptly  as 
that,"  she  declared,  "I'm  not  afraid  you  won't  know 
what  to  buy." 

"What  she  really  wants,"  supplied  Andre*,  "is  an  aban 
doned  farm  or  an  unimproved  quarter-section,  something 
she  can  coax  and  coddle  and  put  rubbers  on  and  dose  with 
fertilizers  —  I  know  her!" 

And  by  the  time  Anne's  holiday  came  to  an  end  it  was 
actually  determined  that  the  visit  should  take  place  al 
most  immediately,  before  rehearsals  began  and  Andre* 
would  be  needing  her. 

On  the  last  evening  of  their  stay,  the  Brents  had 
dinner  with  the  Rickarts  at  their  apartment,  where 
poor  dear  Fanny's  place,  which  Mrs.  Ballard  had  felt 
herself  so  unappreciatedly  competent  to  fill,  was  sup 
plied  by  the  Japanese  butler.  It  was  an  occasion  on 
which  the  Old  Man  was  disposed  to  make  much  of 
Anne,  whom  he  toasted  as  the  guardian  angel  of  Tierra 
Longa. 

Anne  laughed  and  denied  it.  "It's  you  who  are  that; 
though  I'm  afraid  the  settlers  don't  always  recognize 
your  angelic  quality." 

"Well,"  he  chuckled,  "I'm  told  the  devil  was  an  angel 


once." 


"They  don't  think  as  badly  of  you  as  that,"  Anne  as 
sured  him;  "it's  only  that  they  don't  always  see  what 
you  are  driving  at."  Kenneth  wondered  if  she  were  really 
going  to  try  to  draw  the  Old  Man  at  his  own  table;  Anne 
certainly  was  a  cool  one.  "They'd  feel  a  lot  better  just 


268  THE  FORD 

now,"  she  went  on,  "if  they  knew  whether  or  not  Mr. 
Elwood  is  working  for  you." 

"Why,  is  Elwood  working  them?  "  Rickart  kept  his  end 
up  lightly. 

"That's  just  what  they  can't  find  out.  If  they  were 
sure  he  was  working  for  you,  they'd  probably  think  so." 
Anne's  sally  brought  quick,  appreciative  laughter. 

"It's  because  your  power  for  doing  them  good  is  so 
enormous,"  Mr.  Brent  extenuated  gently,  "that  they  are 
always  afraid  it  might  be  evil." 

"That,"  said  T.  Rickart,  "is  why  some  people  fear 
God." 

But  he  reckoned  without  Anne  if  he  hoped  by  that  to 
turn  the  talk  away  from  Tierra  Longa. 

"I'm  apprehensive  myself,"  she  insisted;  "I've  a  no 
tion  if  you  keep  out  of  it  long  enough,  I  may  be  able  to 
build  that  storage  reservoir  at  Indian  Gate,  that  father 
dreams  of.  That's  why  I'm  keeping  my  eye  on  you." 

"My  dear  Anne,"  -  Rickart  raised  his  glass  to  her,  — 
"don't  keep  it  on  me  too  close;  I  might  have  to  take  you 
into  partnership  to  keep  you  quiet." 

' '  That, ' '  said  Anne  placidly, ' '  is  exactly  what  I  'm  after. ' ' 

"For  he  is  up  to  something,"  Anne  insisted  to  Ken 
neth;  "I  can  feel  it  when  I'm  with  him.  Now  I've  let 
him  know  I  want  to  be  in,  and  if  he  won't  let  me  in  through 
the  door,  I  'm  going  to  find  a  crack  somewhere.  But  I  've 
got  to  have  something  definite  to  go  upon." 

Nothing  more  definite  having  transpired,  the  Brents 
returned  to  Palomitas  at  the  end  of  the  week,  with  the 
understanding  that  Ellis  Trudeau  was  to  come  down  as 
soon  as  she  could  be  spared,  and  to  stay  as  long  as  pos 
sible. 


THE  FORD  269 

The  visit  when  it  came  off  was,  to  judge  by  Anne's 
letters,  in  every  way  a  success.  Miss  Trudeau  had  sup 
plied  somehow  the  missing  element  between  Anne  and 
her  father,  the  little  important  things  that  Anne  knew  she 
missed,  and  ached  for,  without  being  able  to  lay  hands 
on  them.  "I  could  almost  put  up  with  the  brother  for  the 
sake  of  having  her  again,"  she  wrote.  And  then  about 
a  week  before  Ellis's  return,  Kenneth  received  another 
and  very  singular  letter. 

There  was  nothing  in  it  whatever  except  the  urgent 
request  that  he  should  come  down  to  Summerfield  the 
next  Saturday. 

He  was  to  leave,  his  sister  wrote,  by  the  first  train  after 
office-closing  hours,  which  on  Saturday  would  be  at  one- 
thirty,  to  have  his  dinner  on  the  train,  and  to  get  off  at 
the  Saltillo  Crossing.  Above  all  he  was  not  to  mention  to 
any  one  where  he  was  going  nor  for  what  reason.  Small 
chance,  Kenneth  thought,  seeing  he  could  himself  form 
no  sort  of  a  notion.  He  was  to  be  returned  to  the  city 
by  the  Sunday  night  express,  which  would  bring  him 
back  safely  to  office  hours  Monday  morning. 

Well,  Anne  generally  knew  what  she  was  about.  He 
left  his  bag  Saturday  morning  at  the  restaurant  where  he 
expected  to  lunch,  not  to  excite  question  by  taking  it  to 
the  office  with  him,  and  got  away  without  having  to  ac 
count  to  any  one  but  his  landlady  for  his  absence.  The 
Saltillo  Crossing  was  a  mile  or  two  out  of  Summerfield, 
where  the  county  road  left  the  town  limits  and  began  to 
climb  toward  the  Draw.  The  distance  to  Tierra  Longa 
had  been  shortened  of  late  years  and  the  road  greatly 
improved  by  the  use  of  crude  oil,  so  that  Palomitas  could 
be  reached  in  about  four  hours  of  steady  driving.  From 


270  THE  FORD 

the  instruction  to  alight  there  .he  supposed  that  he  was  to 
be  taken  directly  to  the  ranch,  and  possibly  that  it  was  not 
desirable  that  his  presence  should  be  noted  in  Summer- 
field.  Accordingly,  when  a  little  after  seven  that  evening 
he  signaled  the  train  to  stop  at  Saltillo  Crossing,  he  was 
not  surprised  to  have  Anne's  voice  hail  him  high  up  from 
some  dim  bulk  of  vehicle,  which  he  presently  made  out  to 
be  the  spring  wagon,  with  Peters  driving  behind  his  best 
team  of  bays.  They  were  off  almost  before  he  had  seated 
himself  in  the  back  seat  behind  Anne,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  team  had  settled  to  its  stride  that  he  turned  and  kissed 
her. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  odd,  wordless  communica 
tion  between  those  two,  which  still  operated  in  moments 
of  crisis  or  tension,  that  Anne  made  no  effort  to  relieve 
his  mind  in  respect  to  his  sudden  summons.  With  a  brief 
inquiry  after  members  of  the  family,  he  relapsed  into 
silence  and  the  pleasures  of  the  swift  movement  and  the 
road.  These  were  mostly  of  the  fresh  air,  the  country 
sounds,  and  familiar  roadside  scents.  For  the  first  mile  or 
two  they  had  the  ancient,  oily  smell  of  Petrolia,  then  the 
canebrake  by  the  water-gates,  and  the  miles  and  miles 
of  orchard  beginning  to  drip  sap  from  branches  newly 
pruned.  Finally,  where  the  swell  of  the  hills  first  sensi 
bly  began,  he  caught,  off  to  their  right  in  the  soft  dark, 
the  rank  smell  of  a  flock  and  the  thin  trickle  of  wood 
smoke  from  a  herder's  fire.  As  it  came  to  them  across  the 
open  pastures  it  had  the  power  to  include  them  once  more 
in  the  interests  and  intimacies  of  Palomitas. 

"I  did  n't  want  you  to  be  seen  in  Summerfield,"  Anne 
abruptly  began.  "Elwood  is  there  ...  he  filed  to-day  on 
the  surplus  waters  of  Sanchez  Creek." 


THE  FORD  271 

"Ah-ha."  Kenneth  indicated  by  the  rising  inflection 
his  sense  of  the  pertinence  of  this  information.  Sanchez 
Creek  was  one  of  the  smaller  streams  that  took  its  rise 
within  the  boundaries  of  Agua  Caliente  and  poured,  in  wet 
years,  its  waste  waters  far  below  the  fence  upon  the  un- 
preempted  plain. 

"Last  week,"  she  went  on,  "Jevens  filed  on  Wacoba. 
'Nacio  found  the  filing  notice  when  he  was  looking  for  the 
colts  that  broke  out  of  the  south  pasture." 

"Elwood  and  Jevens  as  thick  as  ever?" 

"Thick  as  thieves  .  .  .  and  that's  more  truth  than  fig 
ure  I'm  afraid."  She  plunged  at  once  into  her  story. 
Elwood  had  been  taking  options  on  property  right  and 
left,  tossing  them  up  and  catching  them  again  like  a  boy 
with  a  new  ball.  He  had  even  let  one  or  two  of  them  drop, 
and  the  people  who  gave  them  had  been  tickled  to  death 
to  come  into  a  bunch  of  money  so  easily;  they  had  simply 
run  after  him  with  their  tongues  hanging  out  with  eager 
ness  to  renew. 

Gradually  the  impression  had  gone  about  that  to  get 
two  or  three  hundred  dollars  on  one  of  Elwood's  options 
was  like  finding  it  in  your  Christmas  stocking.  He  had  a 
form  all  his  own  which  he  would  write  out  in  the  presence 
of  the  owner,  with  enough  nonsense  in  it  to  carry  out 
the  idea  that  he  was  just  a  big  boy  having  the  time  of 
his  life. 

"I  was  talking  with  Willard  about  it,"  said  Anne,  "and 
he  seems  to  think  the  option  is  a  sort  of  gentleman's 
agreement,  and  not  much  good  in  court  anyway,  but  I  had 
a  look  at  one  —  I  just  want  you  to  see  it.  I  've  had  to 
know  something  of  the  nature  of  a  contract  in  my  business, 
and  —  well  —  I  asked  'Nacio  to  invite  Pedro  Gonzales 


272  THE  FORD 

from  the  Tulares  to  come  up  to-morrow  and  bring  his 
option  with  him." 

" You  can  be  certain  if  Elwood  puts  his  name  to  it,  it's 
a  water-tight  contract  for  Elwood/'  Kenneth  assured  her. 

The  road  began  now  to  climb  the  hills,  so  that  Peters 
could  give  the  team  its  time,  leaning  over  the  back  of  the 
seat,  making  himself,  as  indeed  he  always  had  been,  one 
of  the  family  council,  while  he  enumerated  the  properties 
covered  by  Elwood's  options,  and,  as  nearly  as  he  could 
gather  from  general  gossip,  the  terms  for  which  they  were 
given. 

It  was  all  too  indefinite,  however,  for  Kenneth  to  make 
much  of.  " The  thing  is  to  see  one  of  them/'  he  said ;  "  I  'm 
glad  you  thought  of  that.  But  the  most  important  thing 
of  all  is  to  know  for  whom  he  is  working,  himself  or 
Rickart." 

"Ah,"  sighed  Anne,  "I  was  hoping  you  could  tell  us 
that  by  this  time.  But  I  can  tell  you  one  thing,  and  that 
is  he  is  not  working  for  the  good  of  Tierra  Longa."  There 
was  more  to  this,  all  of  which  was  unfolded  as  they 
rounded  curve  after  curve  of  the  brown-breasted  hills, 
treeless  and  scented  with  the  faint  suggestion  of  new 
growth  and  recent  rains.  Somehow  —  but  nobody  could 
trace  it  to  its  sources,  Anne  said,  there  had  sprung  up  in 
Tierra  Longa  the  impression  that  Elwood  was  about 
to  undertake  some  scheme  of  local  development  which 
bubbled  up  in  him  and  at  times  quite  unconsciously  over, 
and  that  the  great  plan,  whatever  it  might  be,  was  starred 
with  his  bright  friendliness  and  his  easy  capacity  for  put 
ting  Tierra  Longa  on  the  map. 

It  had  come  out  so  naturally  for  the  bucolic  imagina 
tion  that,  as  Elwood  had  lived  with  the  land,  he  had  be- 


THE  FORD  273 

come  possessed  of  a  sense  of  its  possibilities;  its  voice,  so 
compelling  and  to  them  so  inarticulate,  had  spoken  to  him 
in  terms  of  canals,  highways,  towns,  so  that  what  to  the 
Tierra  Longans  had  been  in  the  nature  of  an  enslavement, 
had  become  to  Elwood  the  clear  call  to  realization.  It  was 
as  if  they  had  cherished  all  these  years,  in  the  hope  of 
what  the  valley  might  become,  a  very  noble  and  lovely 
lady,  too  exalted  for  any  of  them  to  mate  with,  but  who 
yet  might  be  persuaded  to  look  favorably  on  this  more 
accomplished  suitor.  All  the  air,  Anne  said,  was  full  of 
such  cheerful  prognostication  for  everybody  but  the 
Brents.  And  here,  with  its  touch  of  that  intrinsic  feminine 
quality  which  came  out  in  her  so  surprisingly  at  times, 
came  Anne's  own  story. 

From  the  first,  she  said,  she  had  distrusted  Elwood. 
The  wind  of  rumor  that  blew  up  from  the  town  had,  by 
the  time  it  reached  Palomitas,  been  purged  of  the  dust  of 
romance  with  which  the  man's  opulent  personality  had 
dazzled  the  eyes  of  the  townspeople,  and  carried  a  clear 
tang  of  mischief.  All  this  time  she  had  never  come  any 
nearer  to  him  than  an  occasional  passing  on  the  road  be 
tween  Agua  Caliente  and  the  ranch  house.  A  little  blunt 
in  her  immediate  personal  relations,  Anne  had,  in  respect 
to  things  moving  at  a  distance,  remarkable  intuitions. 
But  as  if  to  compensate  for  the  frequency  with  which  her 
mind  at  the  moment  of  grappling,  failed  of  its  intuitive 
perceptions,  she  had  kept  the  discerning  touch.  However 
much  her  somewhat  depersonalized  intellect  missed  of 
you,  her  firm,  warm  hand  seldom  failed  of  its  true  report. 
It  was  an  old,  old  secret  between  brother  and  sister  that  it 
had  never  been  any  use  for  Kenneth  to  lie  to  Anne  once 
she  had  hold  of  him,  and  no  secret  at  all  from  Anne  herself 


274  THE  FORD 

that  wherever  she  distrusted  her  judgment  or  her  temper, 
there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  lay  hands  on  the  subject 
of  her  indecisions.  But  after  all  it  is  no  simple  matter  for 
a  perfect  lady,  such  as  Anne  undoubtedly  was,  to  walk  up 
to  a  perfect  stranger  of  the  known  temperament  of  El- 
wood,  and  lay  hands  on  him.  Much  as  she  wanted  a 
moment  alone  with  him  in  which,  by  the  sympathy  of 
sense,  to  shut  out  all  confusing  impressions,  she  realized 
that  it  was  important  that  such  a  meeting  should,  when 
it  came,  appear  accidental.  If  Elwood,  as  she  surmised, 
meant  mischief,  he  would  too  easily  be  put  on  his  guard 
by  having  a  well-known  business  woman  like  Anne  Brent 
lie  in  wait  for  him. 

Kenneth  could  hear  his  sister  chuckle  in  the  dark  as  she 
told  how  she  had  finally  achieved  the  moment  of  revealing 
intimacy.  To  Anne  the  stalking  of  a  man's  secret  thought 
in  his  mind  was  an  exhilarating  sort  of  adventure.  He 
had  heard  the  Old  Man  chuckle  like  that  sitting  quietly 
at  his  desk,  revolving  his  business  piracies;  and  he  was 
struck,  through  the  association  of  that  odd  little  note  of 
laughter,  with  certain  likenesses  of  method.  Kenneth 
did  not  really  believe  that  his  sister  understood  what  was 
in  people's  minds  by  touching  them;  he  thought  that  she 
used  the  personal  contact  as  a  means  of  picking  up  little 
things  that  almost  any  person  might  have  noticed  who 
had  a  noticing  disposition.  He  had  long  ago  discovered 
that  there  was  seldom  anything  known  to  T.  Rickart 
which  was  not  also  known  to  his  business  rivals;  it  was 
the  way  in  which  inconsiderable  items  jumped  together 
in  his  mind  that  gave  him  his  advantage,  and  constituted 
the  likeness  he  noted  now  between  his  sister  and  his  em 
ployer. 


THE  FORD  275 

Anne  had  discovered  that  when  Elwood  was  at  Agua 
Caliente,  as  he  often  was  for  two  or  three  days  at  a  time, 
he  usually  spent  his  evenings  at  the  Company's  store. 

This  was  the  supply  station  for  the  Rickart  ranch  and 
its  employees  and  the  families  of  a  dozen  or  more  lank 
mountaineers  who  had  their  cabins  on  the  crest  of  the 
range  above  its  fences.  Sometimes  the  Brents  sent  over 
from  Palomitas  for  small  matters  when  there  was  not 
time  to  fetch  them  from  the  town  or  Summerfield. 

Between  the  wings  of  the  low  adobe  building  which  con 
stituted  the  store,  a  wide,  uncovered  patio  had  become  the 
lounging-place  of  the  vaqueros  and  ranch  hands,  and  an 
occasional  prospector  or  hunter  who  passed  that  way. 
Here  Elwood  loved  to  loaf  after  the  early  evening  meal, 
feeding  his  humor  with  the  quaint  philosophy  of  cow- 
punchers  and  herders.  And  this  was  the  setting  Anne 
chose  for  her  first  encounter. 

It  suited  her  better  than  she  knew,  for  Anne  on  horse 
back  as  she  came  cantering  up  along  the  Palomitas  road 
was  a  taking  figure.  Tall  and  thin-hipped,  the  brown- 
laced  riding-boots  and  the  knee-length  riding-coat,  over 
brown  corduroy  breeches,  gave  her  distinction.  She  had 
her  mother's  full  bosom  and  the  lovely  Greek  joining  of 
the  throat  and  chin,  and  above  that  her  father's  placid 
forehead  with  classic  bands  of  hair  folded  neatly  in  at  the 
nape  of  the  neck  without  a  trace  of  coquetry.  As  she 
forded  the  creek  with  the  pale  gold  of  the  twilight  behind 
her,  her  hat  was  off  and  the  collar  of  her  silk  shirt,  rolled 
back  over  the  brown  corduroy,  revealed  the  tanned  line 
of  her  throat. 

She  rode  lightly  with  bridle  dropped  low  and  the  tassel 
of  her  quirt  trailing  the  water.  As  she  pulled  up  at  the 


276  THE  FORD 

outer  edge  of  the  patio,  Elwood,  in  the  shirt-sleeved  un 
dress  of  the  ranch  afternoon,  rose  instinctively,  and  the 
storekeeper,  in  the  custom  of  the  country,  introduced 
them.  They  went  all  three  into  the  store  together,  for 
that  also  was  the  custom  of  the  country  that  the  new 
comer  should  be  made  to  feel  part  and  parcel  of  the  oc 
casion.  Anne  had  counted  on  Elwood's  interest  in  her  as 
a  type  to  engage  him  in  conversation,  but  she  found  her 
work  easier  than  she  expected. 

She  appreciated  his  ready  conquest  of  the  townspeople 
in  the  instinctive,  unpremeditated  effort  which  she  found 
herself  make  to  stand  well  with  him.  In  spite  of  the 
ravages  of  dissipation,  the  loose  lip,  the  puffed  lids,  the 
man  had  quality;  he  moved  easily  as  a  mountain  lion, 
his  eyes  glittered.  Anne  had  made  herself  a  quarter  of  an 
hour's  errand  at  the  store,  which  could  have  been  stretched 
if  necessary,  but  it  was  n't  necessary.  Elwood  was  too 
much  a  man  of  the  world,  too  steeped  in  news  of  the 
neighborhood,  to  have  missed  the  right  note  with  Miss 
Brent  of  Palomitas.  One  or  two  of  the  store  coterie 
drifted  past  the  door  as  Anne  stood  waiting  the  fumbling 
service  of  the  keeper,  and  drifted  away  again. 

Thoroughly  at  their  ease  with  each  other,  Elwood  and 
Miss  Brent  had  come  out  of  the  narrow  door  at  the  same 
moment;  the  sleeve  of  his  shirt  brushed  the  shoulder  of 
her  corduroy  with  a  thrill  that  pricked  warningly  along 
her  consciousness. 

Elwood  was  saying,  "I've  wanted  to  call  on  your 
father,  Miss  Brent;  one  hears  inviting  things  of  him  — 
and  Palomitas."  He  was  too  expert  to  add  "and  of  you" 
so  early  hi  the  acquaintance,  but  Anne  was  amusedly 
aware  of  the  implication. 


THE  FORD  277 

"Oh,"  she  said,  " Father  will  be  pleased  to  see  you;  he 
has  very  little  company.  But  I  'm  not  sure  of  Palomitas. 
From  what  I  hear  of  you,  one  should  n't  show  you  a  piece 
of  property  one  is  anxious  to  keep  in  the  family." 

He  laughed  in  his  turn. 

"You've  heard  of  my  little  weakness.  The  truth  is  I 
know  so  little  about  ranches  that  I  can't  for  the  life  of  me 
make  up  my  mind  which  one  I  like  the  best." 

"Well,"  ventured  Anne,  "I'm  a  real-estate  agent,  — 
when  I  have  time  for  being  anything  but  my  father's 
daughter,  —  perhaps  I  could  help  you."  And  to  herself 
she  had  said,  "Now  let's  see  what  he  will  make  of  that." 

He  made  a  very  good  imitation  of  boyish  eagerness  as  he 
snatched  at  the  suggestion,  "Would  you?  I  don't  really 
know  am/thing;  I've  no  doubt  I  shall  get  fearfully  stuck. 
If  you'd  just  go  over  a  few  of  the  most  promising  with 


me—" 


"I  think  I  see  myself,"  thought  Anne,  "playing  your 
game  for  you."  But  aloud  she  said,  "It  all  depends  on 
what  you  mean  to  do  with  a  piece  of  property,  whether 
you  want  it  or  not.  If  it 's  general  farming,  I  recommend 
the  Willard  property,  but  if  it 's  live  stock  - 

"The  truth  is,"  he  engagingly  confessed,  "I'm  think 
ing  of  everything.  I  take  them  day  and  day  about,  but  I 
never  get  any  nearer  a  conclusion." 

"In  that  case,"  said  Anne,  "come  and  see  my  father. 
He 's  going  in  for  sheep,  and  he  has  more  ways  than  any 
man  you  ever  saw  for  making  it  appear  the  one  occupa 
tion  for  Tierra  Longa." 

"I'll  come,"  he  promised.  "But  I  would  be  obliged  to 
you,  Miss  Brent,  if  you'd  look  over  some  of  these  prop 
erties  with  me  — " 


278  THE  FORD 

He  was  doing  it  very  well,  Anne  thought,  but  not  quite 
well  enough  to  pass  with  a  woman  who  has  had  profes 
sional  experiences  with  the  nuances  of  prospective  buying. 
"  He  does  n't  want  any  of  them/'  she  decided.  Even  though 
she  liked  him,  perhaps  because  of  it,  she  found  she  dis 
trusted  him  more  than  ever. 

They  moved  to  the  edge  of  the  patio  from  which  the 
fall  of  the  land  was  toward  the  creek,  and  from  that  to 
the  river.  All  down  the  boulder-strewn  banks  the  heaps  of 
wild  vine  and  the  buckthorn  thickets  were  bursting  full  of 
buds.  The  sky  was  still  alight,  the  tip  of  El  Torre  Blanco 
delicately  glowing,  but  along  the  ground  darkness  crept 
like  an  exhalation.  Over  beyond  the  Saltillos  lay  a  streak 
of  citron-tinted  cloud  within  which  floated  a  silver  disk 
of  moon.  The  man's  fluent  sentiment  which  was  at  once 
his  strength  and  his  undoing  swept  them  together  for  a 
moment. 

He  waved  his  arm  boyishly  toward  the  crescent  wonder. 
"  That 's  what  I  want  .  .  .  I've  always  wanted  it." 

"Oh,  that's  mine,"  Anne  laughed  indulgently,  "but 
you  may  have  it  to  play  with." 

Under  the  web  of  leafless  vines,  which  spun  spider- 
wise  from  tent  to  tent  of  the  ancient  willows,  as  he  helped 
her  to  her  horse,  Anne,  who  more  often  than  not  vaulted 
lightly  from  the  ground,  scorning  assistance,  hesitated, 
broke  through  the  hold,  but  took  the  saddle  at  last  with 
her  hand  on  his  shoulder,  surprised  to  find  herself  a  little 
breathless.  He  kept  her  hand  a  second  or  two  longer  than 
was  necessary,  as  Anne,  being  entirely  honest,  admitted 
to  herself  he  had  a  right  to  do  after  the  advances  she  had 
quite  shamelessly  made. 

"I  may  come,  may  n't  I?"  he  insisted. 


THE  FORD  279 

All  this,  modified  as  one  does  modify  things  of  that 
kind  for  telling  to  one's  brother,  Anne  retailed  to  Kenneth 
along  with  her  general  deduction.  "He  does  n't  want  a 
ranch,"  she  was  certain;  "he  is  n't  interested  in  land  nor 
in  what  can  be  done  with  it.  He's  simply  holding  those 
properties  until  he  can  do  something,  find  out  something. 
That  was  why  I  thought  of  getting  hold  of  one  of  those 
contracts;  I  thought  you  might  make  a  better  guess  at  it 
if  you  knew  for  how  long  he  wants  them  and  on  what 
terms." 

"He  might  n't,  after  all,  want  them  for  any  harm  to 
the  owners.  There's  all  sorts  of  moves  in  the  game,"  sug 
gested  her  brother.  "These  big  operators  often  cover 
ground  they've  no  notion  of  using,  as  a  blind,  or  simply  as 
a  way  of  making  themselves  safe." 

Anne  considered  that  for  a  while  in  silence. 

"No,"  she  concluded  at  last,  "he  means  something 
definite  and  he  means  it  now.  The  man  is  simply  bristling 
with  mischief.  You  must  n't  try  to  talk  me  out  of  it, 
Ken;  you  know  how  it  is  with  me  ...  I  would  n't  have 
sent  for  you  if  I  had  n't  been  perfectly  sure."  They  all 
knew  that  once  Anne  had  had  her  swift  prevision  it  did  n't 
come  again,  and  whenever  she  had  been  overruled  in  it, 
it  had  always  been  to  the  family's  disadvantage. 

"You  know  how  it  was  with  them  colts  -  '  This  was 
Peters's  contribution ;  he  had  had  his  turn  at  combating 
what  he  termed  "the  female  instinck"  with  male  rea 
sonableness  and  knew  what  he  got  by  it. 

Kenneth  paid  his  own  tribute  handsomely.  "I  was  n't 
trying  to  talk  you  out  of  it;  I  was  only  hoping.  I  must 
have  a  look  at  that  contract  to-morrow." 

They  were  silent  a  long  time  as  the  horses  strained  up 


280  THE  FORD 

the  last  pitch  of  the  hill,  and  when  the  loosened  tug  and 
the  renewed  rattle  of  the  harness  marked  the  point  at 
which  the  road  began  to  wind  down  into  the  Draw,  Anne 
spoke  again. 

"  Whatever  it  is  this  time,  Ken,  you  must  be  in  with  it." 

He  knew  she  was  thinking  of  Petrolia  and  of  all  that 
she  had  sent  him  to  T.  Rickart  to  learn.  He  wondered  if 
as  long  ago  as  that  she  had  had  one  of  her  flashes  of  fore 
knowledge  that  his  chance  would  come  at  Tierra  Longa. 

"I'll  be  in,"  he  assured  her,  "if  I  have  to  pry  my  way 
in  with  a  pick." 

The  waning  moon  rose  later  and  lighted  the  valley,  but 
within  the  Draw  they  still  traveled  in  deep  shadow.  Be 
low  them  they  could  hear  the  soft  clash  of  budding  boughs 
and  the  creek's  incessant  gurgle.  Here  they  smelled  the 
bush  lupin  and  there  the  crosiers  of  the  fern  pushing  up 
along  the  water  border;  now  the  wild  grape  and  then  the 
Judas  tree  sent  them  wafts  of  sweetness.  Old  scents,  old 
sounds  tugged  at  Kenneth's  sense  with  the  one  ineffable 
word  which  the  spring  tries  to  say.  Somehow  the  place 
at  his  side  which  his  sister  filled  was  achingly  vacant;  it 
lacked  some  warm,  vivifying  presence  which  he  could 
draw  within  the  circle  of  his  arm.  As  they  crossed  the 
Ford  of  Mariposa,  which  ran  at  flood,  the  horses  stopped 
to  drink  and  he  thought  of  Virginia.  He  remembered,  as 
though  it  were  yesterday,  how  he  had  wrestled  with  her. 

It  was  past  the  turn  of  the  night  when  they  drew  up  at 
the  ranch  house  and  the  morning  coolness  had  already 
begun  to  flow  from  the  watching  Torr'.  Below  them  in 
the  hollow  of  Tierra  Longa  a  lost  mist  from  the  sea  crept 
and  fumbled. 

The  house  lay  all  asleep  like  a  crouching  dog  with  one 


THE  FORD  281 

eye  awink  at  a  little  window.  They  spoke  and  moved 
softly  all  of  them  under  the  weight  of  the  moonlight  and 
the  cold  drag  of  the  earth  on  its  axis.  Steven  Brent,  who 
had  roused  to  the  soft  clink  of  the  harness  and  the  eager 
stamp  of  the  horses,  hungry  for  their  stalls,  came  out  to 
meet  them. 

Never  a  demonstrative  man,  he  managed  to  get  his 
arms  about  Kenneth's  shoulders.  "It's  good  to  have  you 
home,  son,"  was  all  he  said,  and  it  seemed  to  Kenneth 
more  of  home  than  any  place  since  as  a  child  he  had  left  it. 

"  You'll  have  to  sleep  in  the  west  wing,  Ken,"  his  sister 
warned  softly;  "Ellis  has  your  old  room." 

And  for  the  first  time  he  remembered  that  Ellis  Trudeau 
was  still  his  sister's  visitor. 


IX 

WAKING  late  Kenneth  heard  Ellis  singing  in  his  mother's 
garden :  — 

Senor  San  Jose*, 

A  carpenter  so  fine, 

He  built  a  pretty  cradle 

All  underneath  a  vine;  — 

and  knew  she  must  have  learned  it  from  'Nacio,  or  his 
wife  singing  her  brown  babies  to  sleep  in  the  potrero.  He 
looked  between  the  curtains  and  saw  her  moving  happily 
from  shrub  to  flower,  pruning  a  little  here,  loosening  the 
sandy  loam,  crooning  over  the  seed  beds.  She  was  as 
busy  as  a  nurse  and  as  important;  presently  his  father 
joined  her  and  then  she  was  the  nurse,  competent  and 
respectful,  at  the  elbow  of  the  visiting  physician.  From 
little  snatches  of  their  talk  which  came  in  at  the  open 
window  while  he  dressed,  Kenneth  gathered  that  they 
played  at  some  such  whimsical  realization  of  themselves 
in  relation  to  the  garden,  and  that  much  of  her  charm  for 
Steven  Brent  lay  in  just  this  capacity  for  taking  seriously 
their  pleasant  pretense  of  not  being  serious.  They  mocked 
each  other  over  the  question  of  a  water  allowance  for  the 
begonias,  and  they  could  afford  to  mock  because  they 
both  so  pointedly  did  care  whether  the  begonias  had  wa 
ter  enough,  as  they  would  have  cared  about  a  young  child 
or  an  animal. 

Kenneth  was  not  without  a  young  man's  sentimental 
appreciation  of  the  extent  to  which  a  pretty  girl  and  a 
garden  set  off  one  another.  At  the  belated  breakfast  which 
Anne  served  for  him,  he  gave  her  an  opportunity  to  ex- 


THE  FORD  283 

tend  to  him  her  conspicuous  approval  at  having  been 
even  remotely  the  occasion  of  bringing  this  particular  girl 
and  garden  together. 

"How  long/'  Anne  wished  to  know  at  once,  "do  you 
think  her  brother  can  spare  her?" 

"Not  long,  I  imagine.  There's  nothing  settled  about 
the  play  yet,  but  he  looks  to  me  as  if  he  had  n't  had  any 
thing  since  she  left  but  cigarettes  and  —  inspiration." 

"For  goodness'  sake,  don't  tell  her."  Anne  was  alarmed. 
"Maybe  he '11  learn  to  appreciate  her."  She  mused  awhile 
chin  on  palm.  "  I  'd  be  almost  willing  to  put  up  with  him 
here  for  a  while,  if  it  is  the  only  way  of  keeping  Ellis." 

"You  couldn't  and  he  wouldn't."  Kenneth  felt  al 
ways  bound  to  restrain  himself  in  speaking  of  the  play 
wright,  conscious  of  a  desire  to  do  him  something  less  than 
justice.  "He  thinks  he  loves  the  big,  free  West,  but  he'd 
die  if  you  got  him  off  the  asphalt.  And  I  can't  see  you 
being  an  inspiration  to  him." 

Anne  shrugged.   "Is  he  any  good,  do  you  think?" 

"How  can  I  tell?  That's  the  worst  of  geniuses,  you 
can't  tell  until  it's  over." 

"And  by  that  time  they  may  have  used  up  several  per 
fectly  good  ordinary  people.  Oh,  well  -  '  Anne  threw 
it  off.  For  that  day  it  was  the  only  time  she  could  spare 
her  brother  which  had  not  to  do  directly  with  the  busi 
ness  which  brought  him  to  Tierra  Longa. 

In  the  middle  of  the  morning  'Nacio  brought  Miguel 
Gonzales  with  the  Elwood  option  carefully  done  up  in 
several  wrappings  of  a  black  silk  handkerchief.  'Nacio 
with  his  Indian  instinct  had  attached  himself  to  the  land. 
He  had  worked  for  Jevens  and  now  he  worked  for  Steven 
Brent.  But  with  all  his  faith  and  affection  he  served 


284  THE  FORD 

Anne.  He  still  called  her  "Anne ' '  to  her  face  occasionally, 
to  show  that  he  was  as  good  as  anybody,  but  to  every  one 
else  she  was  "The  Senorita,"  the  lady  of  the  hacienda. 
'Nacio  introduced  Gonzales  as  his  cousin;  a  convenient 
term  to  cover  all  degrees  of  the  complicated  and  far  re 
moved  kinships  of  their  kind.  The  Gonzales  ranch  was 
the  alkalied,  adobe  remnant  of  an  early  grant,  lying  along 
the  river  flat,  stiff  soil  and  unworkable,  but  it  carried  a 
very  ancient  riparian  right.  The  option  which  he  pro 
duced  with  due  regard  to  its  preciousness  was,  at  first 
glance,  just  the  sort  of  thing  that  might  have  been  dashed 
off  by  a  man  in  a  high  good  humor,  so  sure  of  himself  that 
he  could  be  careless  of  formalities,  and  Miguel  had  no 
uneasiness  about  it  except  such  as  had  been  engendered 
in  his  race  by  two  or  three  generations  of  dealing  with 
Gringos.  He  had  already  spent  half  of  the  sum  he  had  re 
ceived  for  it  and  was  apprehensive  lest  it  should,  in  case 
of  any  slip,  be  demanded  back  of  him. 

"My  cousin  he  want  to  know  eef  Elwood  not  buy  his 
ranch  he  mus'  geeve  back  the  dinero?"  'Nacio  inter 
preted,  on  which  point  Kenneth  reassured  him. 

"My  cousin  he  say,  eef  he  get  any  more  money  from 
Elwood?  He  say,  Elwood  gonna  buy  his  ranch  anyway?  " 

It  is  doubtful  if  Miguel  understood  Kenneth's  explana 
tion  of  an  indefinitely  renewable  option,  but  he  appeared 
to  appreciate  the  opinion  of  a  lawyer  of  such  distinction, 
'Nacio  having  laid  it  on  rather  thick  in  the  family  inter 
est.  To  his  sister  Kenneth  said  privately,  "If  they  are  all 
like  that,  it  simply  means  that  Etwood  has  them  tied  up 
as  long  as  he  wants  them  at  the  present  price  of  property  in 
Tierra  Longa." 

Anne,  the  business  woman,  nodded.  "If  anything  hap- 


THE  FORD  285 

pened,  an  oil  strike,  or  an  irrigation  project,  he  could  sell 
them  out  for  twice  or  three  times  over  what  they  cost 
him." 

"Well,  that's  business,"  Kenneth  reminded  her. 

"It  might  be  oil.  .  .  .  Mr.  Rickart  seemed  anxious  that 
I  should  n't  get  any  such  notion  .  .  .  and  that  might  be 
interest  in  me,  and  it  might  be  interest  in  getting  the  first 
whack  at  it  himself.  But  you  notice,  Ken/'  -  they  had 
the  map  before  them,  —  "that  every  piece  of  property 
he  has  under  option  carries  a  first-class  water  right.  The 
two  he  let  lapse  had  secondary  rights  only." 

It  was  all  very  perplexing.  The  Scudder  boys  and  a 
neighbor  of  theirs  called  Baff  came  up  for  the  midday 
Sunday  dinner.  It  was  Anne  who  had  contrived  that 
their  all  being  there  on  the  occasion  of  Kenneth's  visit 
should  seem  anything  but  a  contrivance.  Baff  came  to 
consider  a  job  of  fence-building.  It  was  the  first  time  the 
Scudders  had  had  a  meal  there  since  Addie  and  her  hus 
band  had  returned  to  Palomitas. 

While  the  ranch  was  still  running  half-handed,  their 
fashion  of  life  was  very  simple.  'Nacio,  who  plumed  him 
self  on  the  title  of  head-shepherd,  ate  at  home;  Demetrio, 
who  had  been  hired  to  assist  at  lambing-time,  boarded 
with  him.  The  bunk  house  had  not  been  reopened. 
Anne  and  her  father  had  their  meals  alone,  Peters  and 
the  ploughman  in  the  wide  old  kitchen,  an  arrangement 
which  relieved  Addie  of  the  necessity  of  keeping  the  chil 
dren  up  to  the  standard  of  behavior  which  would  have 
been  required  at  the  Brents'  table.  Thus  any  arrange 
ment  which  was  demanded  by  Anne's  own  personal  fas 
tidiousness  was  put  on  a  basis  that  salved  Mrs.  Peters's 
social  sensitiveness. 


286  THE  FORD 

"  'T  ain't  noways  right  that  young  ones  should  have  the 
burden  of  their  elders  put  upon  them  all  the  time/7  was 
the  way  Addie  explained  to  her  family  an  arrangement 
which  in  their  improved  social  status  seemed  to  demand 
an  explanation.  But  to-day  the  big  dining-table  had  been 
pulled  out  its  full  length  to  accommodate  the  chicken 
dinner  that  was  Addie's  tour  de  force.  After  it  they  sat 
about  and  talked,  with  Anne  tapping  the  white  cloth  as 
her  mother  used  to  do,  only  where  Mrs.  Brent  had  barely 
endured  these  occasional  visitors,  Anne  studied  them  and 
their  effect  upon  Kenneth. 

It  was  all  so  like  Petrolia;  as  if  it  were  too  much  like 
for  him  to  endure  it,  Steven  had  pushed  back  his  chair 
almost  as  soon  as  the  meal  was  concluded,  and  catching 
Ellis  Trudeau's  eye  had  carried  her  away  with  him  to  the 
south  pasture,  where  on  its  sun-steeped  slope  'Nacio  was 
herding  the  first  of  the  season's  lamb-band.  The  Scud- 
ders  smoked.  Baff,  who  being  more  of  a  stranger  was 
under  the  greater  obligation  to  show  himself  at  home 
among  them,  tilted  comfortably  in  his  chair,  picking  his 
teeth  with  one  hand  and  stroking  his  ankle  with  the  other. 
The  conversation  dropped,  after  some  disappointing 
sallies  on  the  part  of  Baff  and  Lem  Scudder,  —  made 
with  intent  to  discover  what  connection,  if  any,  between 
Rickart  and  Elwood  might  be  extracted  from  Rickart's 
junior  clerk,  —  into  the  general  contagion  of  hopeful 
ness. 

They  were  not,  they  wished  Kenneth  to  understand, 
of  that  stripe  of  Tierra  Longans  who  had  been  taken 
in  by  Elwood's  game,  rather  of  those  to  whom  the  fact 
that  he  was  playing  a  game  had  been  clearly  estab 
lished.  Their  superiority  consisted  largely  in  being  cer- 


THE  FORD  287 

tain  that  Elwood  did  not  play  with  himself  only,  his 
own  amiable  and  —  to  the  holders  of  options  —  profit 
ably  unstable  impulses.  Somewhere  behind  his  incon 
sequence  they  divined  the  shaping  hand.  If  the  Old  Man 
was  not  the  god  of  that  machine,  then  it  was  some  one 
very  like  him;  one  of  those  half  gods  whose  divinity  is 
conferred  by  dollars.  On  the  whole,  it  seemed  most  likely 
that  the  Old  Man  was  about  to  satisfy  the  perennial  ex 
pectation  and  "  develop  the  property,"  an  expectation 
founded  on  little  else  than  the  extent  to  which  the  prop 
erty  loudly  called  for  development  and  would  so  con 
spicuously  repay  it.  As  for  those  who  had  given  options, 
the  spectacle  of  whose  possible  beguilement  it  gave  them 
an  unadmitted  feeling  of  superiority  to  contemplate,  if 
they  lost  out  in  a  rise  of  prices,  that  was  their  business. 
In  the  moment  of  seeing  most  clearly,  under  Anne's  sug 
gestion,  what  their  neighbors  stood  to  lose,  Baff  and  the 
Scudders  ranked  themselves,  by  virtue  of  the  unchal 
lenged  American  right  to  keep  your  objective  to  yourself, 
on  Elwood's  side. 

"I  allow  a  man's  got  to  be  mighty  close-mouthed, 
a-handlin'  one  of  them  big  businesses,"  Mr.  Baff  gave  it 
as  his  opinion. 

"I  allow  so,"  the  younger  Scudder  gravely  conceded. 
"  It  stands  to  reason  that  whoever  does  develop  the  prop 
erty  has  got  to  have  something  to  kind  of  settle  back  on. 
I  allow  they  ain't  anybody  goin'  to  put  no  amount  of 
capital  in  Tierry  Longway,  without  he  stands  to  get  some- 
thin'  out  of  it." 

"The  way  I  dope  it  out  is  this,"  Mr.  Baff  explained  to 
the  company;  "the  proper  play  when  anybody  like  this 
Elwood  comes  pussy-f  ootin'  about,  is  n't  to  fall  for  him 


288  THE  FORD 

the  way  them  river  ranchers  did,  but  to  fall  in  with  him. 
There  ain't  anything  he  can  do  to  the  price  of  land  in  the 
valley  that  he  can  keep  all  to  hisself." 

"I  allow  you  said  an  earful,"  Lem  Scudder  agreed, 
judicially  tapping  out  his  pipe  on  his  boot  heel.  "If  it 
pays  Elwood  an'  his  friends  to  hold  on  to  that  much 
farmin'  land,  I  reckon  it'll  pay  some  of  the  rest  of  us." 

The  company  lapped  itself  in  complacency;  —  all  but 
Peters,  who  exhibited  signs  of  having  the  case  of  them 
colts  still  on  his  mind  and  was  heard  to  rumble  throatily 
about  the  female  instinck. 

Anne  checked  him.  Last  night  in  the  dark  it  had  been 
easy  to  win  credence  from  Kenneth,  but  what  could  she 
say  in  broad  day  to  Lem  Scudder  and  a  man  called  Baff 
which  would  not  look  ridiculous.  And  there  was  nothing 
Kenneth  could  say  which  would  not  be  read  as  pique  at 
not  being  himself  wholly  in  the  Old  Man's  confidences. 

"So  far  as  I  can  make  out,"  —  Baff  voiced  the  general 
sentiment,  —  "we  ain't  got  no  call  to  mistrust  Elwood 
pusonally.  There  ain't  anything  he's  done  which  is  out 
o'  the  ordinary  way  o'  doin'  business.  He 's  smart  as  they 
make  'em;  you  have  to  keep  in  with  them  Capitalists; 
but  it  looks  like  pusonally  he's  an  all-right  fellow." 

"He  sure  is,"  -  Lem  capped  the  situation.  "He's  a 
regular  fellow." 

Peters,  not  to  be  wholly  silenced,  contributed  some 
thing.  "We  got  this  ag'in'  him,  that  he's  thick  with 
Jevens." 

"Oh,  well,  now,"  —  Baff  extended  a  large  tolerance. 
"We  only  got  Jevens' s  word  for  how  thick  they  are. 
Jevens  drives  him  an'  Elwood  pays  for  it.  It 's  my  opin 
ion," —  Baff  had  the  air  of  offering  this  modestly,  but 


THE  FORD  289 

with  the  conviction  that  the  company  was  very  much 
mistaken  if  they  did  n't  come  to  it,  -  "  it's  my  opinion 
that  if  Elwood  did  n't  do  more  than  hire  Jevens  to  black 
his  boots  for  him,  Jevens  would  give  out  that  they  was  in 
timate."  With  which  stroke  of  wit  the  whole  question  ap 
peared,  for  the  time  being,  to  be  disposed  of. 

It  was  like  nothing  so  much  as  the  meetings  of  the 
Homestead  Development  Company  in  Petrolia.  As  a  boy 
Kenneth  had  derived  a  vast  sense  of  affairs  from  those 
sessions  about  his  father's  table;  now  he  perceived  that, 
like  them,  these  men  of  Tierra  Longa  plotted  without 
knowledge  and  imagined  childishly.  They  were  as  much 
the  victims  of  their  own  limitations  as  they  were  likely 
to  be  of  the  machinations  of  Rickart  or  Elwood. 

That  earlier  experience,  as  well  as  the  recent  extension 
of  his  vision  over  the  field  of  Labor,  had  prepared  him  for 
the  revelation  of  this  moment,  which  rose  upon  him  out 
of  his  own  hesitances  and  resentments  as  a  reflection 
from  below  the  horizon  is  lifted  on  the  heated  air  of 
summer. 

For  he  liked  these  men  and  understood  them:  the  in 
stinct  which  made  them  look  to  the  land  for  their  living, 
their  impulse  to  fall  in  behind  the  Old  Man,  to  be  herded 
and  led  by  him;  taking  rank  with  the  old  tribal  im 
pulse  that  had  driven  Brent  himself  to  take  service  with 
Rickart,  and  the  instinct  which  pulled  him  back,  at  any 
pause  in  his  allegiance,  to  Palomitas.  Facing  the  cer 
tainty  of  their  defeat  by  the  very  elements  which  made 
them  good  farmers,  producers  rather  than  players  of  the 
game,  all  Kenneth's  young  contempt  for  unsuccess  went 
from  him  as  the  tide  from  a  rock.  The  difference  between 
what  they  fancied  lay  behind  Elwood's  schemes  and 


290  THE  FORD 

what  his  experience  taught  him  was  Elwood's  likeliest 
motive,  gave  to  inevitable  defeat  the  quality  of  ancient 
tragedy;  the  tragedy  of  men  defeated,  not  squalidly  by 
other  men,  but  by  forces  within  themselves  which  had 
the  form  and  dignity  of  gods. 

Such  an  interpretation  of  the  situation  did  not  yet  shape 
itself  in  words;  it  lay  all  about  him  in  the  warm  light  and 
air  which  came  in  through  the  open  door,  the  scent  of  the 
Banksia  rose  over  it  and  of  the  fresh-turned  earth  of  the 
garden  beyond.  It  was  so  mixed  with  the  associations 
which  had  freed  the  vision  in  his  mind,  that  for  a  long 
time  he  was  not  able  to  think  of  it  without  at  the  same 
time  recalling  the  flick  of  Ellis  Trudeau's  dress  across  the 
pastures  and  the  image  of  Baff  rocking  complacently  on 
two  legs  of  his  chair,  his  thumbs  in  his  armholes.  And 
because  it  was  still  so  formless  he  was  not  even  able  to 
produce  it  to  offset  Anne's  own  notion,  which  she  put  to 
him  succinctly  when  the  session  had  broken  up  at  a  sign 
from  her  to  Peters. 

" There's  nothing  you  can  do  against  him  that  El- 
wood  would  n't  turn  somehow  to  his  advantage,"  she 
said.  "That  man  Baff  is  right  when  he  says  the  only 
thing  to  do  is  to  go  with  him.  And  Lem  Scudder  is  right 
when  he  says  that  if  it  is  to  Elwood's  advantage  to  hold 
property  in  the  valley,  it's  equally  to  yours  to  hold  the 
same  kind.  Now  it  is  perfectly  plain  that  what  Elwood 
is  after  is  water,  and  the  only  unappropriated  water  in 
the  valley  is  the  river  surplus.  You  must  file  an  appro 
priation  notice  to-day." 

"The  river  surplus!"  Kenneth  found  the  proposal 
staggering  in  its  simplicity.  Thousands  of  cubic  feet  of 
water  over  and  above  what  was  claimed  by  the  local 


THE  FORD  291 

ditches  ran  to  waste  every  season,  on  wet  years  it  reached 
even  to  the  sea,  and  it  was  on  this  waste  that  any  scheme 
for  reclamation  of  Tierra  Longa  lands  must  be  calculated. 
As  the  laws  of  the  State  were  then,  the  surplus  waters 
could  have  been  claimed  by  any  person  making  an  ap 
propriation  of  them  according  to  due  form,  and  could  be 
held  as  long  as  the  appropriation  was  shown  to  be  based 
on  actual  use  of  the  waters. 

"I  don't  know  why  Elwood  has  n't  filed  on  it  himself, 
unless  it  is  to  avoid  suspicion.  He  'd  have  to  begin  work 
in  sixty  days,  and  that  would  be  such  a  give-away." 

"Well,  I'd  have  to  work  it  too,"  Kenneth  objected. 

"  I  know.  We '11  have  to  risk  it.  You  notice  that  those 
options  were  for  six  months;  some  of  them  have  already 
been  given  for  two  or  three;  I  think  whoever  is  back  of 
Elwood  is  about  ready  to  strike,  and  we  can't  risk  their 
getting  ahead  of  us. 

"You  can  make  your  appropriation  just  below  the 
Tierra  Rondo  Gate.  Father  says  we  can  get  the  water 
from  there  onto  the  land  below  the  Ridge,  and  it's  all 
Government  land  in  between."  She  went  on  explain 
ing  the  practicability  of  her  suggestion.  " You've  two 
months'  leeway,  before  you  have  to  make  a  beginning, 
and  it  won't  cost  more  than  a  few  hundred  dollars  to  hold 
it  for  the  first  year.  At  the  worst  I  can  carry  it  for  you 
for  as  long  as  that." 

"Then  why  not  you  do  the  filing?" 

Anne  shook  her  head.  "Mr.  Rickart  has  been  awfully 
decent  about  the  mortgage.  I'd  not  like  to  cross  him; 
he  'd  take  it  harder  from  a  woman.  But  if  you  do  it,  — 
don't  you  see?  —  you  will  be  sort  of  in  with  him;  you  can 
put  your  interests  in  his  hands,  make  it  a  favor  to  him." 


292  THE  FORD 

"I  don't  know  that  he'll  take  it  so  much  of  a  favor  for 
one  of  his  employees  to  block  his  plans."  Kenneth  was 
merely  beating  about  for  time:  the  whole  proposal  had 
taken  his  breath  away. 

Anne  was  prompt  with  him.  "  Don't  you  see  that  the 
point  is  that  you  don't  know  that  it  is  his  plan.  Not  yet. 
And  if  you  make  it  plain  to  him  that  you  did  n't  know, 
he'll  think  it  clever  of  you  to  have  put  a  spoke  in  El- 
wood's  wheel.  It's  perfectly  simple.  You  come  down 
here  for  a  visit  and  find  Elwood  up  to  something,  and  you 
just  take  a  hand  on  general  principles.  A  man  is  en 
titled  to  take  an  interest  in  his  home  town.  And  then,  if  it 
turns  out  that  Rickart  is  interested,  you  can  put  yourself 
on  his  side.  ...  He  'd  be  hopping  mad  if  Elwood  really  is 
doing  anything  here  without  his  knowledge.  .  .  .  What 
ever  happened  you  must  be  on  Rickart's  side.  Oh,  Ken, 
— "  she  was  vexed  at  his  slowness,  —  "have  n't  you  had 
enough  of  going  against  him?" 

She  was  so  right  as  Rightness  is  viewed  in  the  business 
world  .  .  .  but  there  was  more  than  the  slower  pace  of  his 
mind  that  divided  them.  He  wished  to  say  something  of 
what  had  been  in  his  thoughts  a  few  moments  before,  of 
being  on  the  side  of  the  ranchers,  of  using  his  knowledge 
of  the  Old  Man's  methods,  not  to  his  own  interest,  but  to 
serve  the  larger  claim.  Before  the  thing  could  shape  itself 
in  words,  Anne  swept  it  away  with  the  details  of  her  plan. 

"I've  all  the  papers  in  the  house.  You  can't  do  any 
thing  to-day,  Sunday,  but  if  you  post  your  notice  a  few 
minutes  after  midnight,  Peters  can  still  get  you  to  the 
Express  ...  it's  nearly  all  downhill  .  .  .  and  you've  ten 
days  in  which  to  get  to  Westerville  to  the  recorder's 
office.  You  can  manage  that,  can't  you?" 


THE  FORD  293 

"I  can  send  it  to  the  recorder  by  mail,"  he  admitted. 

The  point  at  which  the  water  appropriation  was  to  be 
made,  just  crossed  the  line  into  another  county  of  which 
Westerville  was  the  county  seat.  It  began  to  look  really 
plausible. 

Anne  sighed  with  relief.  "After  all  there  may  be  noth 
ing  in  it.  ...  It 's  queer  how  everything  that  goes  on  in 
Tierra  Longa  always  seems  so  important.  .  .  .  Anyway, 
we  might  as  well  have  that  water  right  in  the  family. " 

It  was  when  they  went  out  to  look  for  their  father  that 
she  proposed  that  he  should  go  up  to  the  gate  before  dark 
and  look  for  the  point  at  which  the  notice  of  appropriation 
should  be  posted.  "I've  made  a  monument,"  she  said, 
"but  you  11  never  find  it  in  the  dark  unless  you  know  where 
to  look  for  it."  And  after  a  moment  she  added,  "Take 
Ellis  with  you  —  no,  she  won't  know  unless  you  tell  her. 
She's  fond  of  riding;  and  anyway,  she's  company." 
Then,  as  they  caught  sight  of  the  girl  and  Steven  Brent 
hovering  over  the  season's  new  plantings  in  the  orchard, 
she  added:  "It's  wonderful  how  they  get  on  together. 
She  understands  things  in  him  that  I  would  n't  have 
thought  of."  Kenneth  had  no  clue  to  the  momentary 
sadness  that  shadowed  her.  He  did  not  know  that  there 
was  always  a  fear  in  the  back  of  Anne's  mind  that  she 
might  miss  her  father  as  her  mother  had  missed  him. 
Manlike,  he  shared  his  father's  feelings  that  they  had 
missed  understanding  their  mother.  "After  all, "Anne 
concluded  without  relevance,  "y°u  are  the  one  that's 
like  father." 

Anne  carried  their  visitor  back  to  the  house,  and  father 
and  son  walked  between  the  young  almonds  and  the  olives. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  orchard  they  were  stopped  by  the 


294  THE  FORD 

waters  of  Vine  Creek  which  ran  a  slender  stream  of  over 
flow  from  the  ditch  as  the  sign  of  a  wet  season.  Far  below 
they  marked  the  shining  waste  of  the  river,  and  heard 
as  always  the  clear  call  of  the  empty  land  to  be  put  to 
human  use.  But  though  they  were  nearer  than  they  had 
ever  been  to  realization,  they  said  next  to  nothing.  It  was 
just  as  they  were  turning  back  toward  the  lambing  cor 
ral  that  Brent  spoke  almost  lightly,  "So  you're  going  to 
get  into  the  big  game,  son?  "  He  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that  Anne's  counsel  would  prevail;  and  Kenneth  gave  him 
Anne's  answer. 

"It  may  not  come  to  anything  .  .  .  but,  anyway,  we'll 
have  that  water  right  in  the  family." 

"That's  the  way  to  go  at  it,"  Brent  approved.  "And 
do  it  while  you  're  young,  so  if  you  find  you  can't  play  the 
game  it  won't  quite  ruin  you." 

Kenneth  opened  his  mouth  to  say  what  had  recently 
come  into  his  mind,  that  he  might  have  a  better  chance 
to  play  it  successfully  if  he  played  it  for  the  people  of 
Tierra  Longa  instead  of  for  himself,  but  it  swept  over  him 
suddenly  that  just  such  protective  impulses  must  have 
moved  his  father  toward  Jim  Hand  and  Pop  Scudder.  At 
the  bottom  of  that  experience  at  Petrolia  must  have  lain 
something  of  the  same  desire  to  cover  their  lack  with  his 
own  larger  outlook,  and  the  sick  result  of  leading  them  out 
of  their  own  restricted  field  to  a  more  signal  disaster. 
Checked  in  his  motion  to  speak  of  what  he  now  realized 
would  have  led  chiefly  to  painful  memories,  Kenneth 
slipped  his  arm  within  his  father's  and  was  rewarded  with 
a  cordial  pressure,  and  the  evidence  that  they  had  been 
nearer  in  their  thoughts  than  he  might  otherwise  have 
imagined. 


THE  FORD  295 

"I  doubt  you  are  too  much  like  me  to  play  the  game 
according  to  the  rules/'  said  Steven. 

Kenneth  gave  the  arm  a  boyish  squeeze.  "I  don't 
know  what  you  think  you  are,  Dad,  but  I'm  glad  I'm 
like  it." 

"Oh,  well,"  the  elder  Brent  laughed  as  he  led  the  way 
to  the  lambing  corral,  "for  one  thing,  I'm  a  first-class 
sheepman."  For  an  hour  the  talk  was  all  of  the  lambing 
and  the  chances  of  the  spring  market. 

All  this  time  something  at  the  back  of  Kenneth's  mind 
was  busy  with  the  personal  problem.  Was  there,  then,  no 
middle  ground  between  being  the  kind  of  a  man  T.  Rick- 
art  had  become  and  the  sort  that  was  fleeced  by  him?  If 
gifts  like  Rickart's  had  n't  notably  been  used  for  the 
advantage  of  the  tribe,  was  it  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  they  could  n't  be?  Was  a  man  like  his  father, 
too  intelligent  to  rank  with  the  Hands  and  the  Scud- 
ders  on  the  one  side,  and  too  fine  to  be  ranged  with 
the  Old  Man  on  the  other,  to  become,  as  Steven  Brent 
had  been  for  the  past  ten  years,  neither  bird  nor  beast, 
but  batted  about  between  them?  Preoccupations  like  this, 
together  with  his  real  interest  in  the  details  of  his  father's 
business,  quite  put  out  of  mind  his  promise  to  take  his 
sister's  guest  riding  until  he  was  reminded  of  it  by  seeing 
Peters  bringing  up  the  horses  for  saddling.  He  excused 
himself  then  with  Brent's  quick  approbation. 

"It's  I  should  make  excuses,"  he  said;  "I  must  be  get 
ting  an  old  codger,  not  to  remember  that  you  would  want 
some  time  with  your  young  lady.  Oh,"  -  he  put  out  an 
excusing  hand  as  Ken's  exclamation  protested  the  pos 
sessive,  —  "it's  only  my  way  of  saying  how  heartily  I 
endorse  her." 


296  THE  FORD 

"But  she's  not  .  .  .  but  it  is  n't  .  .  ."  Kenneth  found 
himself  unaccountably  blushing.  "Miss  Trudeau  is 
Anne's  friend;  we're  hardly  more  than  acquainted." 

"I  beg  your  pardon"  —  Bi'ent  himself  colored;  "I 
thought  something  your  sister  said . . ."  Not  for  the  world 
would  Steven  Brent  have  intruded  into  the  personal  life 
of  his  children.  "It's  probably  my  mistake,  I  find  her  so 
utterly  charming.  .  .  .  However,  there's  no  harm  done." 

"I  hope  you  haven't  — "Kenneth  began.  He  was 
furious  with  Anne;  it  was  n't  like  her  to  be  silly. 

"Oh,  dear,  no,"  —  Brent  laughed  a  little;  "I  was  only 
thinking  how  I  must  have  bored  her;  I've  talked  of  you 
more  than  a  little." 

It  was  not  a  fortunate  frame  in  which  to  set  out  for  a 
ride  with  a  nice  girl,  to  feel  the  possibility  of  having  been 
put  in  a  fatuous  position.  He  wondered  if  the  fact  that 
she  had  been  bored  accounted  for  the  circumstance  that 
as  they  rode  out  by  the  Agua  Caliente  Gate,  she  did  n't 
seem  in  the  least  interested  in  him.  She  asked  a  thousand 
questions  of  the  land  and  the  trail  and  the  new  life  that 
came  crowding  to  her  quick,  excited  notice,  but  she  dis 
played  none  of  the  consciousness  of  his  being  an  extremely 
nice  young  man  to  which  the  nice  girls  he  had  met  —  at 
places  where  he  had  boarded,  for  example — had  accus 
tomed  him.  He  recalled  now  that  he  had  never  talked 
much  with  Miss  Trudeau  except  about  Virginia  and  her 
brother,  and  he  was  piqued  to  realize  that  she  had  so  suc 
cessfully  all  this  time  kept  from  him  what  his  father  and 
Anne  had  found  in  her. 

It  was  almost  as  if  she  had  n't  thought  him  worth  it. 
She  had  disguised  herself  within  her  interest  in  that 
gifted  pair  almost  as  completely  as  her  slender  figure  was 


THE  FORD  297 

muffled  in  the  riding-skirt  which  he  recognized  as  one  of 
Anne's,  too  big  for  her.  He  tried  to  think  that  he  prob 
ably  had  n't  noticed  her  more  because  of  an  unfeminine 
lack  of  that  desire  to  please  which  in  the  rather  restricted 
society  to  which  a  young  man  boarding  in  the  city  is  ad 
mitted,  was  the  recognized  hallmark  of  thoroughly  nice 
young  womanhood.  He  would  have  thought  something 
like  this  if  she  had  given  him  time  to  think  much  of 
himself  or  her,  but  she  wanted  immensely  to  know;  she 
must  have  everything  named  and  placed  for  her  and  re 
lated  to  the  life  at  Palomitas.  He  told  her  the  names  of 
plants  and  their  natures;  all  that  he  could  remember  of 
the  lore  of  childhood. 

"Oh,"  she  breathed,  full  of  a  child's  delight,  "only 
'Nacio  tells  me  things  like  that."  And  it  suddenly  tickled 
the  native  humor  of  the  junior  clerk  of  T.  Rickart  to  find 
himself  ranked  flatteringly  with  his  father's  head  shep 
herd.  Presently  he  found  her  a  horned  toad,  and  before 
he  let  it  go  again  to  lose  itself  in  the  clean  mesa  dust,  he 
said  a  little  charm  which  'Nacio  had  taught  him,  after 
which,  if  you  turned  the  toad  about  three  times  and 
looked  closely  in  the  direction  he  scrambled  off,  you  were 
sure  to  find  an  Indian  arrow  point;  and  sure  enough  when 
they  looked,  as  Ellis  insisted  on  getting  down  from  her 
horse  to  do,  they  found  a  small,  shapely  point  of  ob 
sidian  quite  perfect  except  for  one  corner  gone.  A  few 
minutes  later  they  went  in  by  the  way  of  the  burrow  of  a 
brooding  elf  owl  and  past  the  downy  owlets  to  come  quite 
out  on  the  other  side  in  the  land  of  fairy  wonder. 

Neither  Agua  Caliente  nor  Palomitas  lands  were 
touched  by  the  river,  which  rose  in  another  country  and 
burst  through  into  Tierra  Longa  about  a  mile  above  the 


298  THE  FORD 

Brent  ranch  where  one  of  the  roots  of  the  Torr'  showed 
in  a  great  basalt  dike.  Above  this  point  lay  the  little 
round  valley  of  Tierra  Rondo,  from  which  the  river  had 
once  poured  in  a  cascade  over  the  dike  which  dammed  it, 
but  now  tunneling  under  tall  chaparral  it  came  out  be 
tween  basalt  pillars,  the  ruined  buttresses  of  the  ancient 
dam  known  as  " Indian  Gate."  There  was  a  tale  about 
those  two  pillars,  of  which  most  people  had  forgotten 
everything  except  that  they  were  Warrior  and  Maiden, 
and  had  stood  there  so  long  that  four-hundred-year-old 
oaks  had  rooted  in  their  crevices  and  climbing  vines  had 
masked  all  but  their  tall,  crested  heads. 

From  the  foot  of  the  gate  the  water  poured  in  a  white 
torrent  over  the  rubble  of  the  broken  dike  to  reach  the 
floor  of  Tierra  Longa,  and  it  was  from  the  top  of  this 
torrent  along  the  middle  mesa  level  that  Steven  Brent  had 
always  thought  the  river  could  be  led  around  the  front  of 
the  Torr'  and  turned  into  the  upper  valley  lands.  Once 
the  gate  was  shut  again  by  a  concrete  dam,  Tierra  Rondo 
would  resume  its  ancient  use  as  a  lake  bed  for  the  stored 
waters  of  the  river,  which  now  ran  all  at  large  in  a  wide, 
shallow  gorge  far  seaward,  and  in  wet  years  mingled  its 
freshness  with  the  tide. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  young  Brent  and 
Ellis  Trudeau  came,  with  slack  'rein  and  shining  eyes, 
across  the  middle  mesa  to  the  foot  of  the  gate,  an  after 
noon  in  which  they  had  by  some  divine  chance  recaptured 
the  old  magic  of  young  wonder.  They  were  so  touched 
with  it  that  they  scarcely  disturbed  by  their  coming  the 
brisk,  small  life  of  the  mesa;  they  answered  the  burrowing 
owls  and  were  answered  by  them  as  their  own  kind.  Hand 
in  hand  they  climbed  up  the  buttresses  of  the  gate  to  look 


THE  FORD  299 

down  on  Tierra  Rondo,  stiff  with  chaparral,  blue  with 
wild  lilac,  and  filled  with  airy  shadow.  From  the  War 
rior's  very  shoulder  they  made  a  fire  to  signal  the  un 
numbered  fairy  tribes  ...  all  of  which  takes  time,  as  does 
also  lying  close  together  and  face  downward  on  the  brink 
of  a  vine-covered  ravine  to  watch  the  raccoons  playing 
tag  and  "  king's  excuse  "  in  the  hollow,  so  that  it  was  much 
too  late  to  have  kept  a  nice  girl  out  riding  by  the  time 
they  rode  back  again  to  Palomitas. 

"It's  all  my  fault,"  Kenneth  called  out  to  Anne,  who 
was  looking  for  them  down  the  Caliente  road  a  little 
anxiously.  He  thought  it  a  pity  the  girl's  fun  should  be 
spoiled  by  being  blamed  for  anything.  "Ellis  wanted  to 
come  back  an  hour  ago,  but  I  made  her  climb  to  the  top 
of  the  Warrior."  And  in  an  aside,  to  make  everything  per 
fectly  secure,  he  said,  "I  had  the  deuce  of  a  time  finding 
your  old  monument."  Then  at  something  in  his  sister's 
face,  to  himself  he  added,  "Confound  it,  I  don't  see  why 
I  can't  call  her  Ellis  if  the  rest  of  the  family  do  it." 

He  had  another  long  conference  with  Anne  after  sup 
per,  and  finally  a  little  before  midnight  Peters  drove  him 
by  the  river  to  the  precise  spot  agreed  upon  so  that  he 
might  post  his  notice  with  the  first  tick  of  Monday  morn 
ing,  and  from  there  on  to  the  Saltillo  Station.  The  next 
morning  at  nine-thirty  he  was  sitting  at  his  desk  at  Rick- 
art's  and  nothing  whatever  appeared  to  have  happened. 


IT  was  a  week  or  ten  days  before  he  saw  Ellis  Trudeau 
again,  the  evening  after  her  return  from  Palomitas,  and 
the  first  word  he  heard  from  her  was  a  reproach. 

"Oh,  why  did  n't  you  tell  me!" 

"Tell  you  — ?"  His  mind  flashed  back  over  the  lapsed 
days  for  the  source  of  the  real  anxiety  that  rang  in  her 
fresh  young  voice. 

"My  poor  Andy  —  he  is  looking  dreadfully!" 

Kenneth  had  run  across  them  at  Gianduja's,  Virginia 
and  the  playwright,  dining  with  two  or  three  others  whose 
air  of  being  habituated  to  the  public  eye  gave  to  their  ap 
pearance  here,  in  the  undistinguished  character  of  din 
ers,  an  almost  undress  effect,  as  if  they  had  been  caught 
stripped  of  some  indispensable  garb  of  manner  without 
which  they  should  not  be  looked  at  too  closely.  Ellis,  he 
could  see,  was  not  looking  at  them,  but  sitting  more  than 
ordinarily  detached  from  the  group,  her  eye  brighter  and 
her  cheek  warmer  for  weeks  in  the  open.  Roving  the  long 
room  of  Gianduja's  for  some  more  attractive  food  for  her 
attention,  she  had  drawn  him  to  her  side  before  the  others 
had  looked  up  or  become  aware  of  his  entrance.  Di 
rected  by  her  glance,  Brent  took  stock  of  the  playwright 
and  admitted  that  he  did,  indeed,  display  a  degree  of 
gauntness,  a  nervous  distraction  more  than  the  part  re 
quired. 

"He  smokes  too  much,"  Kenneth  assured  the  sister, 
hoping  devoutly  this  would  content  her.  He  would  have 
been  at  a  loss  to  explain  his  own  feeling  for  Trudeau  as  a 


THE  FORD  301 

man  consuming  himself  by  emotions  too  pretentious  for 
the  slim  restraints  of  his  personal  constitution.  He  could 
not  have  explained  anything  that  he  might  be  feeling 
about  the  playwright  at  that  moment  without  touching 
on  the  source  of  a  new  and  deep  resentment  against 
Virginia. 

He  had  come  up  from  Palomitas  with  the  new  light  on 
his  own  problem  shed  by  the  reappearance  of  his  boyish 
dream  above  his  horizon,  aching  to  establish  it  more 
solidly  in  line  with  his  future  by  means  of  those  long,  inti 
mate  conversations  with  a  young  person  of  the  opposite 
sex,  in  which,  though  nothing  is  clear,  everything  appears 
to  be  wonderfully  cleared  up. 

Always  a  little  baffled  by  his  sister's  more  swiftly  mov 
ing  mind  and  incisive  methods,  Kenneth  felt  that  he  had 
been  yoked  to  the  Palomitas  scheme  without  having  come 
into  fruitful  relation  to  it,  but  he  was  not  without  appre 
ciation  of  the  extent  to  which  it  might  yet  divert  him 
from  the  ends  which  he  thus  far  pursued.  The  law  as  a 
profession  meant  very  little  to  him.  If,  at  the  time,  the 
Old  Man  had  suggested  that  he  study  medicine  or  me 
chanics,  he  would  have  gone  at  it  with  the  same  clear 
simplicity  and  doubtless  have  passed  as  creditable  exam 
inations.  As  affairs  were  arranged  at  the  office,  he  had 
become,  as  he  himself  recognized,  a  sort  of  legal  detective, 
a  searcher  of  records,  a  trailer  of  clues.  The  best  of  his 
work  came  to  him  through  contact  with  T.  Rickart,  who, 
liking  to  have  this  clean,  personable  youth  about  him,  and 
moved  paternally  to  do  the  best  by  his  son's  chum,  had 
made  use  of  him  on  semi-confidential  errands,  loosing  him 
now  and  then  for  some  executive  flight  over  the  field  of 
his  unlimited  enterprises. 


302  THE  FORD 

But  for  the  last  year  a  latent  restlessness,  the  thing  that 
had  made  him  susceptible  in  the  first  place  to  all  that 
Virginia's  new  range  of  interest  offered  him,  had  reached 
the  point  of  demanding  something  more  personal  and 
explicit. 

Competent  as  Bickart's  hand  was  at  the  reins  of  his 
life,  Kenneth  felt  the  normal  young  man's  desire  to  shape 
something,  even  a  poor  thing,  but  his  own.  Power,  the 
sort  of  power  the  Old  Man  had,  of  driving  men  before  him 
in  herds,  of  rounding  on  them,  fleecing  them,  and  scatter 
ing  them  again  to  depleted  pastures,  made  no  appeal  to 
him.  He  did  somehow  see  himself,  in  his  prophetic  fancy, 
as  the  hope  and  center  of  the  harmonious  group,  the  lead 
ing  citizen,  the  head  of  the  family. 

It  is  not  young  women  only  who  walk  companioned  by 
little  feet,  warmed  in  their  young  imaginings  by  hands 
thrust  invisibly  into  theirs.  The  dream  of  fatherhood  in 
young  men  is  as  sacred  and  endearing,  possibly  as  ex 
plicit.  Kenneth  had  a  way  with  children;  Addie's  oldest 
adored  him.  As  he  walked  a  week  ago  in  the  camisal  a 
whistle  would  bring  'Nacio's  young  brood  to  trot  in  his 
trail  like  amiable  brown  puppies,  and  it  was  so  in  his 
dreams  that  he  saw  himself,  accompanied  and  compan 
ioned.  Now,  by  his  actual  proprietary  contract  with 
Tierra  Longa,  a  background  had  leaped  out  in  the  pic 
ture  with  a  wealth  of  detail  that  led  him  to  suspect  that  it 
had  always  lurked  somewhere  in  the  unmapped  region  of 
his  future.  And  all  of  it  inextricably  mixed  with  Virginia. 
He  did  not  relegate  her  to  any  specific  place  in  the  pic 
ture,  but  he  could  not  clear  it  of  their  long-established 
intimacy. 

He  had,  by  his  brief  dip  into  the  past,  been  reimmersed 


THE  FORD  303 

in  the  old  relation  in  which  the  ascendancy  of  her  mind 
over  his  had  passed  without  question,  and  was  never  so 
near  the  point  at  which  she  could  have  snatched  it  from 
him  as  of  old  she  had  snatched  every  suggestion,  to  make 
it  into  the  serious  drama  of  their  lives.  And  by  her  failure 
so  to  take  it  she  had  disappointed,  not  only  the  expecta 
tion  of  their  established  intimacy,  but  the  honest  ex 
pectation  every  young  man  has  of  every  likable  young 
woman,  that  she  will  become,  on  any  appropriate  oc 
casion,  the  oracle  and  intimation  of  his  destiny. 

But  this  was  hardly  the  sort  of  thing  he  could  say  to 
the  sister  of  the  man  to  whose  totally  irrelevant  affairs 
he  owed  his  check  with  Virginia. 

"He  smokes  too  much,"  he  said,  "and  doesn't  take 
exercise  enough  in  the  open." 

"Andy  loathes  exercise,"  she  sighed,  "and  taking  his 
breakfasts  in  restaurants.  I  suspect  he 's  been  going  with 
out  any.  And  all  this  worry  about  the  theater  has  been  so 
wearing."  She  dropped  again  to  the  note  of  gentle  re 
proach.  "You  ought  to  have  told  me." 

"But  I  thought,"  Kenneth  protested,  "that  that  was 
all  arranged;  that"  —  he  glanced  at  her  dinner  compan 
ions  —  "the  rehearsals  were  already  started." 

"Oh,  they'll  go  on  with  it,  even  if  they  have  to  build 
a  theater  themselves  to  give  it  in,"  she  assured  him. 

The  tension  of  the  trades  union  fight  was  at  that  mo 
ment  at  its  tightest;  when  it  had  become  known,  through 
Miss  Lovinsky's  rather  injudicious  flaunting  of  it  in  the 
papers,  that  "The  Battle"  was  supposed  to  strike  the 
very  roots  of  Capitalism,  there  had  been  difficulties;  dif 
ficulties  which,  it  must  be  admitted,  had  been  made  the 
most  of  by  the  Friends  of  Labor  as  an  evidence  of  their 


304  THE  FORD 

being  taken  seriously.  "  Virginia  is  so  —  so  gallant,"  was 
Ellis  Trudeau's  tribute  to  the  spirit  in  which  the  question 
of  a  proper  stage  and  auditorium  had  been  met. 

Opposite  them  at  the  table  which  was  reserved  for 
Virginia's  coterie,  he  recognized  the  man  who  had  been 
engaged  to  play  the  lead  with  Virginia  —  of  whom  noth 
ing  could  be  said  except  that  he  was  the  sort  of  actor  who 
might  be  found  looking  for  employment  so  far  from  the 
Rialto  of  New  York  —  and  Dickman,  the  producer,  who 
had  been  a  figure  in  the  theatrical  world  of  more  than 
local  reputation.  For  the  reason  why  he  was  not  still 
ranked  with  the  great  names  of  the  stage,  one  had  to  seek 
no  further  than  the  man's  drink-fogged  countenance,  or 
the  faded,  pretty  face  of  his  wife,  turned  to  him  now  with 
a  confidence  nobly  supporting  itself  beyond  the  evidence 
of  failure.  It  was  so  much  a  younger  sister  to  the  look  that 
he  had  marked  often  in  Ellis  Trudeau,  that,  moved  by  his 
old  disgust  for  the  sort  of  flabbiness  that  needed  so  to  be 
supported  by  the  love  and  faith  of  women,  Kenneth  be 
gan,  quite  deliberately  as  his  dinner  was  served,  to  draw 
off  her  attention  from  the  others  and  engage  it  in  a  report 
of  the  progress  of  the  season  at  Palomitas. 

They  kept  the  talk  there  easily  for  half  an  hour,  ques 
tion  and  animated  answer  as  to  the  flooding  of  the  creeks, 
the  number  of  new  lambs,  and  the  first  appearance  of 
mariposa  lilies  in  the  potrero.  Finally,  poised  before  the 
subject  as  if  the  slightest  intimation  on  his  part  of  a  wish 
not  to  speak  of  it  would  send  her  flying  in  the  opposite 
direction,  Ellis  ventured:  "That  Mr.  Elwood  called  on 
your  father." 

"On  Anne,  you  mean."  He  gave  her  a  fleet  look  of  in 
telligence,  sure  by  the  "that  Mr.  Elwood"  that  Anne  had 


THE  FORD  305 

told  her  much.  He  was  collecting  information  about  the 
sheep  business,  Ellis  told  him. 

"Much  he  cares  for  the  sheep  business,"  Kenneth 
laughed;  "the  kind  he  fleeces  are  two-legged." 

The  girl  nodded,  smiling  slightly.  "  He 's  a  mighty  well- 
informed  man,"  she  said;  "he  was  informed  about  your 
visit,  and  about  that  ride  we  took  Sunday."  She  added 
demurely  to  the  quick  interrogation  of  his  eye,  "I  told 
him  my  brother  was  a  writer  and  I  was  collecting  In 
dian  legends." 

"True,  true  ..."  Kenneth  laughed  out. 

But  her  folded  lips  held  something  more  of  amusement. 
"Anne  offered  to  take  him  to  see  the  Warrior." 

"Oh,  by  Jove,  that  was  a  stroke!"  He  could  see  how 
Anne's  quick  wit  would  see  the  advantage  in  making  the 
invitation,  and  how  she  would  take  Elwood  wide  of  the 
point  at  which  his  appropriation  notice  still  stuck  among 
the  lupins.  "I  suppose  my  sister  must  have  told  you 
something  of  what  is  afoot,"  he  supplemented. 

"Not  much,  but  enough  —  I  think  it  is  glorious!" 

This  was  grateful.  He  hardly  realized  how  little  Anne 
would  have  left  to  tell  after  that  Sunday  under  the  War 
rior. 

"It's  going  to  mean  a  lot  to  me  — "  His  legal  caution 
reasserted  itself:  "some  time  I'd  like  to  talk  it  over  with 
you." 

They  were  claimed  the  next  moment  by  some  noisy 
discussion  which  broke  out  about  Virginia's  end  of  the 
table.  In  any  case  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  keep 
wholly  outside  the  whirl  of  Virginia's  excited  interest. 

Quite  beyond  calculation  they  found  themselves  swept 
up  and  relegated  to  their  proper  places  as  audience  to  her 


306  THE  FORD 

role,  admitted  on  all  sides,  to  furnish  a  singular  peril  for 
the  onlooker.  Kenneth  would  have  let  himself  go  much 
further  in  the  direction  that  the  new  red  of  Virginia's  lip 
and  the  new  flash  in  her  eye  signaled  him,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  evidence  offered  him  on  every  side  that  Andre* 
Trudeau  was  there  before  him. 

Modified  as  it  was  by  recent  association,  Kenneth's  gen 
eral  view  of  the  conduct  of  life  for  young  ladies  ran  true  to 
form  and  divided  the  quality  of  appreciation  by  the  num 
ber  of  the  audience.  To  a  personal  and  excluding  view 
Virginia,  flushed  from  rehearsals,  relaxed  and,  tender  with 
spent  emotion,  would  have  enchanted;  passed  about  from 
Lawrence  the  actor  to  Dickman  the  producer,  smacked 
and  savored,  she  savored  of  nothing  so  much  at  last  as 
commonness. 

And  Trudeau  was  always  about;  he  appeared  almost 
to  live  at  the  Studio,  —  " sprawled"  there,  Kenneth  ex 
pressed  it  to  himself,  though  there  was  really  nothing  in 
the  way  Trudeau  sat  or  stood  to  justify  the  note  of  dis 
gust.  It  was  rather  in  the  effect  he  had  of  having  settled 
himself  on  Virginia  like  some  sea  creature  of  a  formless 
ness  that  permitted  its  complete  adjustment  to  the  en 
vironment.  To  Kenneth,  whose  character  was  still  stiff 
with  young  intolerance,  the  spectacle  was  not  a  pretty 
one.  It  was  rendered  positively  objectionable  by  the 
extent  to  which  Virginia  was  taken  in  by  it,  accepting 
Trudeau 's  temperamental  preciousness  as  an  excuse  for 
much  the  fellow  must  have  been  male  enough  to  know  had 
quite  another  genesis;  whether  or  not  he  was  man  enough 
to  admit  it. 

And  yet  every  attempt  of  Kenneth's  to  interpose  a 
restraining  consideration  resulted  somehow  in  his  being 


THE  FORD  307 

more  than  ever  bound  to  the  wheel  of  Virginia's  progress 
as  a  woman  of  genius.  It  was  not,  however,  until  within 
a  week  or  ten  days  of  the  first  night  of  the  production  that 
he  gave  over  attempting  it.  He  had  come  to  the  Studio 
hoping  to  have  Virginia  to  himself  for  an  hour,  only  to 
find  Trudeau,  Miss  Lovinsky,  and  the  others  ensconced 
there,  cutting  wide  swathes  in  the  theory  of  human  be 
havior  in  the  interests  of  what  they  conceived  as  artistic 
freedom.  They  had  worked  through  the  Cosmic  Con 
sciousness  and  the  Development  of  the  Ego,  and  the  play 
wright  had  just  laid  it  down  as  the  last  word  in  Modern 
Thinking  that  there  can  be  no  True  Realization  without 
Experimentation.  As  if  this  marked  the  point  beyond 
which  the  feebler  feminine  spirits  could  not  follow  him, 
the  conversation  dropped  off  to  a  general  murmur  in 
which  the  voice  of  Miss  Lovinsky,  offering  the  names  of 
Wells,  Ellen  Key,  and  Gorky,  was  the  only  intelligible 
item.  As  if  it  marked,  too,  the  limit  of  what  Kenneth 
could  patiently  hear,  he  had  risen  and  walked  to  the  far 
end  of  the  room,  looking  out  through  a  little  window 
there  across  the  flat,  intervening  roofs,  at  the  Bay's  blue 
and  amber.  Fresh  and  flowing  it  looked,  flecked  with 
great  sails,  and  must  have  moved  him  had  he  not  been 
too  much  moved  at  the  moment  by  inarticulate  annoy 
ance.  And  in  a  moment  his  resentment  went  from  him 
at  a  touch,  as  Virginia  came  in  her  old  way  straight  up 
to  him  and  laid  her  fingers  lightly  on  his  breast. 
"I'm  sorry  you  think  so  badly  of  my  acting,  Ken." 
"But  I  don't!  I  don't  see  why  you  say  that!"  He  pro 
tested  against  the  suggestion  of  giving  pain  by  an  opinion 
which  he  obviously  had  n't  expressed.  "  I  have  n't  even 
seen  it!" 


308  THE  FORD 

" That's  just  it.  You  haven't  been  to  a  single  re 
hearsal.  If  you  would  come  and  see  what  it  means  to  me, 
what  I  am  trying  to  do  with  it,  you  'd  be  more  —  sym 
pathetic.  I  wish  you  would  come,  Ken."  That  was  Vir 
ginia.  She  had  everybody  playing  her  game  just  by  being 
genuinely  unhappy  if  you  did  n't  play  it. 

"It  is  n't  your  acting  — "  he  began.  He  meant  to  tell 
her  it  was  Trudeau  that  he  could  n't  endure,  but  he  began 
badly.  "I  know  you  don't  care  a  rap  for  my  opinion  — " 

"It's  because  I  do  care,"  she  caught  him  up.  "I  care 
ever  so,  Kenny.  That's  why  I  hate  so  to  have  you  mis 
understand  me  —  and  my  friends.  I  don't  always  follow 
them;  they're  miles  beyond  poor  me;  but  I've  gone  far 
enough  to  realize  that  artists  must  make  sacrifices,  often 
of  things  they  'd  really  rather  believe  and  be  ...  that  is,  if 
they  want  to  accomplish  anything."  She  played  with  the 
button  of  his  coat  and  there  was  a  faint  suggestion  in  her 
sagging  hand  of  instinctively  and  unconsciously  seeking 
his  support.  "We  women  have  to  go  so  fast  these  days  .  .  . 
People  don't  always  seem  to  realize  that  when  a  woman 
finds  herself  carried  out  beyond  what  she  was  brought  up 
to  believe  in  ...  that  she  sometimes  .  .  .  suffers,  Ken." 

She  let  him  go  at  that,  gathering  herself  against  her 
womanly  weakness.  "There'll  be  a  full  rehearsal  Tues 
day.  I  wish  you  would  come,  Ken." 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it,  when  Virginia  gave  her 
whole  mind  to  the  part  of  a  woman  of  genius,  she  did  it 
very  well.  In  his  heart  Kenneth  knew  that  he  should  not 
be  able  to  keep  away  from  the  rehearsal. 

In  keeping  with  the  pretensions  of  Democratic  Drama, 
real  workingmen  had  been  secured  for  the  strike  scenes, 
which  rendered  night  rehearsals  obligatory.  Accordingly, 


THE  FORD  309 

when  Kenneth  found  his  way  into  the  theater,  which 
actually  had  been  hired  with  very  little  difficulty  after 
the  first  flourish  of  opposition,  he  found  a  considerable 
audience  of  supers  already  collected,  filling  the  pit  and 
being  herded  on  and  off  the  stage  in  the  interest  of  the 
mass  effect.  Virginia,  in  her  character  of  leading  lady, 
was  keeping  herself  sacredly  apart.  Avoiding  Miss  Lov- 
insky,  who  as  press  agent  sat  about  snapping  up  tidbits 
of  appreciation  with  her  customary  eager  yelps,  Kenneth 
made  out  Ellis  Trudeau  sitting  apart  in  one  of  the  boxes 
and  joined  her  there. 

He  thought  she  looked  less  well  than  when  he  had  last 
seen  her  and  was  struck  with  the  fact  that  he  really 
had  n't  seen  her  since  the  meeting  at  Gianduja's  and  said 
as  much.  She  seemed  constrained ;  said  that  the  rehearsals 
made  great  demands  on  her;  that  she  had  all  her  brother's 
notes  to  take,  and  tapped  her  stenographer's  book  to 
point  her  excuse.  She  came  back  to  that  book  after  some 
desultory  talk  about  the  progress  of  the  play,  showed  him 
her  neat  shorthand,  and  asked  if  he  thought  she  could 
get  something  to  do  in  that  line. 

"I  take  all  Andy's  dictation  and  type  all  his  manu 
scripts.  I  can  really  spell."  She  was  both  shy  and  anxious. 
"I  should  like  to  earn  something." 

"But  with  the  success  that  everybody  says  the  play  is 
going  to  be  -  "  hq  began. 

She  cut  in  hastily.  "All  the  more  if  it's  a  success; 
they'll  take  it  on  the  road.  Nothing  will  stop  Andy;  he'll 
head  straight  for  Broadway."  She  seemed  to  wish  Brent 
to  take  it  for  granted  that  she  was  to  be  left  behind,  but 
before  he  could  take  up  the  point  with  her  the  full  re 
hearsal  was  called. 


310  THE  FORD 

Kenneth  wandered  about,  viewing  it  from  different 
angles  of  the  house,  interested  in  the  unfamiliar  tech 
nique,  but  unable  to  get  any  thrill  from  the  performance. 
He  thought  it  distinctly  unpromising,  and  was  surprised 
to  find  that  others  felt  that  progress  had  been  made.  The 
cast,  made  up  as  it  was  of  chance-met  material,  he  judged 
not  particularly  a  good  one,  but  it  at  least  brought  out  to 
advantage  Virginia's  unpracticed  vigor.  He  guessed  that 
the  professional  actors  rather  resented  her,  and  none  of 
them  were  especially  pleased  with  their  lines.  Trudeau 
sat  beside  his  sister,  gabbling  corrections  and  alterations, 
and  at  times  affectedly  tearing  his  hair. 

Dickman  went  about  with  a  lighted  cigarette  continu 
ally  adrip  from  his  lips,  exhaling  alcoholic  fumes;  Ken 
neth  saw  Ellis  Trudeau  shrink  once  as  he  bent  over  her. 

There  was  a  vast  amount  of  propaganda  in  the  lines, 
which  the  workingmen  supers  duly  applauded  as  it  came, 
and  so  contributed  to  the  sense  that  the  play  was  really 
getting  on  very  well.  It  ended  indeed,  for  them  on  a  tri 
umphant  note  to  which  Kenneth  could  scarcely  rise,  and 
after  waiting  about  for  a  time  for  producer  and  play 
wright  to  be  done  with  Virginia,  he  found  himself  instead 
walking  home  with  Ellis  Trudeau.  They  talked  very  little 
and  that  little  was  all  about  the  chances  of  her  getting 
paid  employment. 

As  he  thought  this  over  later,  it  struck  him  as  singular. 
Kenneth  had  drawn  up  Virginia's  contract  with  Trudeau 
and  knew  that,  in  addition  to  royalties,  he  was  to  receive 
a  sum  for  directing  the  production.  Brent  had  supposed, 
on  no  better  authority  than  his  client's,  that  this  was 
right  and  customary.  It  appeared  from  his  knowledge  of 
the  contract,  that  the  success  of  the  play  would  make 


THE  FORD  311 

Trudeau  independent,  and  his  sister's  sudden  and  impor 
tunate  sally  after  employment,  on  the  very  eve  of  that 
event,  added  one  more  twist  to  his  feeling  of  being  at  last 
at  grips  with  the  complicated  process  of  modern  living. 
Before  he  had  time  to  do  more  than  think  it  over,  Anne 
added  a  turn  to  the  screw  in  a  letter  in  which  she  prac 
tically  commanded  him  to  bestir  himself  to  find  Ellis  a 
situation. 

He  went  then  for  the  first  time  to  call  on  her  at  her 
lodgings,  and  was  so  moved  by  the  poor  plainness  of  it 
that  he  forgot  to  be  vexed  with  Anne  for  overlooking  the 
embarrassments  which  might  easily  beset  a  young  man  in 
search  of  employment  for  a  pretty  girl  of  his  acquaint 
ance.  But  if  Ellis  suffered  any  embarrassment  in  his  call 
ing  so,  it  was  not  for  any  impression  that  was  made  on  him 
by  her  environment.  She  had  none  of  the  traditional  atti 
tudes  of  a  young  lady  forced  to  seek  humble  employment, 
neither  bright  bravado  nor  self-pity  nor  the  fine  pretense 
of  economic  independence.  She  wanted  typewriting  or 
stenography  to  do  because  she  wanted  primarily  to  get 
out  of  her  present  situation,  and  wanted  it  with  a  des 
peration  that  nothing  Kenneth  knew  of  that  situation 
could  explain.  She  was  so  bent  upon  it  that  she  had 
neglected  to  think  that  her  urgency  might  have  to  be 
explained,  and  accepted  gratefully  his  suggestion  that 
her  willingness  to  be  left  behind  by  her  brother  grew  out 
of  her  love  for  the  West  and  a  wish  not  to  leave  with 
out  a  deeper  draught  of  it. 

She  was  very  reasonable  about  her  chances  of  getting 
work,  full  of  practical  suggestions  which  uncovered,  af- 
fectingly  for  the  young  man,  the  extent  to  which  her  clear 
surfaces,  which  he  had  mistaken  for  the  placid  niceness 


312  THE  FORD 

generic  to  young  ladies,  mirrored  an  ever-present  anx 
iety. 

And  in  the  mean  time,  her  quiet  acceptance  of  the  sev 
erances  to  be  wrought  by  the  success  of  her  brother's 
play,  brought  him  face  to  face  with  the  loss  out  of  his  own 
life  of  Virginia.  For  Virginia  was  so  much  a  part  of  his 
life  that  he  had  accepted,  as  part  of  the  universal  scheme 
of  things,  her  reappearance  in  it  just  as  the  adjustments  of 
his  own  business  gave  him  leave  to  attend  to  her.  He  had 
found,  after  the  first  strangeness,  that  the  things  which 
she  had  been  doing  in  the  interim  —  getting  married  and 
divorced  —  had  scarcely  affected  the  renewal  of  their  re 
lations,  had  been  no  more  than  the  temporary  diversion 
of  interest  which  must  be  allowed  to  young  women  when 
their  young  men  are  battling  for  support  and  professional 
standing.  Anne  had  said  that  Virginia  had  married  be 
cause  there  was  n't  anything  else  for  her  to  do,  and  in  a 
way  Anne  was  right. 

Lively  girls  like  Virginia  had  to  be  up  to  something.  .  .  . 
Here  she  was  now  "up  to"  this  play.  And  suddenly  the 
play  promised  to  develop  a  vitality  capable  of  snatching 
her  away  from  him  bodily  into  those  regions  from  which 
so  recently  he  had  recovered  her. 

Daily  intimations  of  such  an  issue  of  "The  Battle" 
multiplied.  The  newspapers  had  been  disposed  to  be  in 
terested  in  Virginia,  her  beauty  and  supposed  talent,  and 
to  exaggerate  the  quality  of  social  success  from  which  she 
had  turned  to  become  a  Friend  of  Labor,  and  to  be  silent 
about  her  divorce,  of  which  possibly  they  had  n't  heard. 
Labor  was  interested.  Local  organizations  bought  ad 
vance  seats  en  bloc. 

Capital  was  interested.  The  one-eyed  organizer  having 


THE  FORD  313 

reappeared  on  the  Coast,  Trudeau  had  offered  him  a  box 
and  Virginia  had  daringly  offered  Frank  another.  Frank 
had  accepted  the  dare;  he  was  giving  a  box  party  in 
honor  of  Miss  Rutgers  of  New  York.  Miss  Rutgers,  fully 
alive  to  being  in  the  West  where  one  did  a  great  many 
things  one  would  n't  have  thought  of  doing  at  home,  was 
tickled  with  the  idea  of  being  a  patron  of  Democratic 
Drama;  and  whatever  Miss  Rutgers  of  New  York  did, 
a  great  many  people  in  San  Mateo  and  Burlingame  did 
also.  So  the  tide  rose  triumphantly. 

And  after  all,  the  play  failed.  Not  all  at  once,  with 
merciful  certainty.  It  flared  up  at  first  with  the  brave 
show  of  " Society"  and  the  thunder  of  a  packed  house, 
Labor  loudly  applauding  everything  that  Labor  approved. 
But  under  it  was  heard  the  faint  snicker  of  Capital  at 
the  Mumbo  Jumbo  caricature  of  itself,  and  under  the 
damping  effect  of  the  next  morning's  press  the  flare  died 
down  in  a  gray  smudge.  It  appeared  that  Trudeau 
did  n't  have  a  play  and  that  Virginia  could  n't  act. 

She  gave,  The  Chronicle  admitted,  an  excellent  imi 
tation  of  herself,  which  had  the  sole  advantage  of  being 
an  imitation  of  a  very  charming  person.  The  Examiner 
dubbed  it  a  second-rate  piece  of  self -exploitation,  and  the 
play  a  mere  lumpy  mass  of  propaganda  unenlivened  by 
crude  melodrama. 

Biting  criticism,  easily  explained  on  the  ground  of  a 
Capitalistic  bias;  but  unhappily  Capital,  which  had  gone 
with  one  hand  up  to  guard  and  the  other  for  defense,  came 
away  with  both  hands  comfortably  in  its  pockets,  to  send 
its  friends  to  see  the  show,  —  "So  perfectly  naive,  you 
know." 

By  the  third  night  the  snicker  was  fairly  audible  in  the 


314  THE  FORD 

audience  and  Labor  began  to  wonder  if  after  all  it  had 
n't  been  made  to  look  the  fool. 

Kenneth,  who,  in  the  deceptive  glow  of  the  first  night, 
had  tendered  his  congratulations  with  a  queer  clutch  at 
his  heart,  dared  not  go  to  Virginia.  He  was  indignant  for 
her,  and  relieved,  and  considerably  mixed  as  to  his  own 
relation  to  the  incident.  He  called  instead  on  Ellis  Tru- 
deau  to  tell  her  about  a  place  that  was  vacant  with  Kline 
and  Kauser,  brokers.  He  found,  in  the  hint  of  the  inex 
plicable  in  her  attitude,  something  which  matched  his 
own  secret  trepidation. 

"It  has  n't  come  home  to  him  yet,"  she  said,  admitting 
without  preamble  all  that  Kenneth's  polite  inquiry  about 
the  author  of  the  play  implied.  ' '  And  naturally  I  have  n't 
the  heart  to  force  it  on  him.  All  I'm  hoping  for  is  that 
they  can  keep  it  going  till  he  finds  out  for  himself;  he's 
quite  capable  of  finding  out,  you  know,  and  of  taking  it 
off  because  it  is  n't  worthy  of  him." 

Kenneth  saw  that  her  affection  had  hit  upon  the  saving 
note  in  the  situation.  "Ah,"  he  said,  "  we  must  do  what 
we  can  to  keep  it  going." 

"It  depends,  of  course,  on  whether  Virginia — on  what 
she  thinks  of  it." 

"That's  just  the  point;  how  does  she  take  it?" 

"Oh,  I  hoped  you  could  tell  me."  He  saw  a  dull  flush 
rise  unaccountably  along  her  cheek.  ' '  They  have  such  dif 
ferent  ways  of  looking  at  things  —  Andy's  friends  —  you 
never  can  tell.  But  she  could  n't  have  meant  anything 
unkind  ...  It's  the  way  she  really  would  feel  .  .  .  that 
it  was  heroic,  advanced  .  .  .  Miss  Lovinsky,  I  mean." 

"Miss  Lovinsky?" 

"She  was  here  yesterday,  full  of  something.  .  . .  Andy 


THE  FORD  315 

did  n't  see  her  —  Oh,  you  must  believe  he  would  n't  have 
had  anything  to  do  with  it  ...  to  make  use  of  her  trouble 
that  way!  As  if  it  were  n't  bad  enough  for  her  husband  to 
leave  her,  without  making  an  advertisement  of  it  - 

"What!" 

"Oh,"  —  she  said  after  a  dismayed  interval,  —  "don't 
tell  me  you  have  n't  seen  The  Bulletin!" 

There  were  a  good  many  reasons  why  a  clerk  of  T. 
Rlckart's  might  not  be  absolutely  on  the  hour  with  the 
news  in  a  city  that  published  its  morning  papers  at  11  P.M. 
the  night  before  and  its  evening  papers  at  11  A.  M.  He  had 
run  into  the  Trudeaus',  being  in  the  neighborhood,  on  his 
way  to  lunch,  and  had  not  seen  the  paper  which  she  now 
held  out  to  him  folded  to  display  sickening  headlines  - 
"Talented  Leading  Lady  Makes  Sacrifice  of  Husband  — 
Considers  Mother  of  Child  Has  First  Claim." 

" "  said  Kenneth,  unaware  that  he  had  said  any 
thing  not  suitable  to  be  said  in  the  presence  of  young 
ladies,  consumed  with  the  pure  horror  of  the  American 
male  to  find  his  own  women  made  the  subject  of  news 
paper  sensationalism,  and  by  an  equally  poignant  regret 
that,  as  things  were,  he  could  n't  kick  the  writer. 

He  came  out  of  a  red  cloud  of  anger  presently  to  catch 
the  last  of  what  Ellis  Trudeau  was  saying,  to  the  effect 
that  after  all  it  depended  on  how  much  Virginia  had  cared 
in  the  first  place,  whether  she  would  be  more  or  less  hurt 
by  it. 

"I  don't  know  .  .  .  Sieffert  was  a  skunk  ...  I  don't 
think  she  cared  much  one  way  or  the  other.  But,  of 
course  you  understand,  she  could  n't  have  consented  to 
this, — she  is  n't  capable — "  He  choked ;  not  from  know 
ing  that  Virginia  was  incapable  of  making  capital  of  the 


316  THE  FORD 

circumstances  of  her  divorce,  but  that  she  would  be  in 
capable  of  realizing  that  it  would  be  making  capital;  she 
would  take  it,  as  no  doubt  the  writer  had  meant  she  should, 
as  her  contribution  to  the  cause  of  the  New  Woman.  It 
was  Lovinsky,  of  course;  who  else  could  have  so  dressed 
up  the  item  of  Bert  Sieffert's  intrigue  with  a  kitchen- 
maid  in  the  phrases  of  sex  emancipation,  —  how  Lovinsky 
had  wallowed  in  them  —  with  Virginia  figuring  as  the 
partisan  of  the  right,  even  of  a  husband,  to  the  full  De 
velopment  of  His  Personality.  He  felt  that  he  must  get 
to  Virginia  at  once;  he  must  make  her  understand  that 
the  Lovinsky  woman  must  be  suppressed.  He  was  so  bent 
upon  getting  to  her  that  he  neglected  to  reassure  Ellis 
Trudeau  of  his  entire  belief  that  her  brother  had  had  noth 
ing  to  do  with  it.  Come  to  think  of  it,  he  was  n't  so  sure; 
there  was  n't  much  that  he  'd  put  past  that  bunch.  Two 
or  three  times  on  his  way  to  the  Studio,  for  there  could  be 
no  stopping  for  lunch,  the  girl's  troubled  face  came  back 
to  him  with  a  faint  suggestion  that  it  would  have  been 
better  to  talk  it  out  with  her,  that  there  might  be  things 
even  yet  that  he  did  n't  know;  but  he  was  obsessed  with 
the  idea  that  the  one  thing  was  to  stop  talk  of  every  kind. 
Fortunately  he  had  n't  to  break  it  to  Virginia.  She  had 
the  papers;  she  had  all  the  papers;  and  she  was  a  little 
scared.  She  exonerated  Trudeau  and  defended  Miss 
Lovinsky;  it  did  n't  occur  to  Kenneth  until  afterward  that 
she  was  a  little  too  apt,  a  little  too  well  prepared  against 
attack.  But  whatever  sanction  she  had  given  the  news 
paper  woman,  she  had  n't  expected  it  would  be  like  this. 

"She  must  have  had  the  best  intentions,"  she  insisted; 
"she  thought  it  would  —  interest  people." 

"Oh,  it  will,  it  will,"  Kenneth  groaned.   "She's  made 


THE  FORD  317 

sure  of  that  by  making  it  appear  an  affair  of  only  a  few 
weeks  ago  instead  of  two  years."  But  he  was  softened  to 
the  situation  by  perceiving  that  Virginia  had  cried. 

"Look  here,  my  dear,"  he  said  with  a  fine  male  large 
ness,  "you  must  get  out  of  all  this;  cut  the  whole  bunch. 
Oh,  I  know  Lovinsky  has  n't  done  anything  to  you  that 
she  would  n't  do  by  herself ;  but  that 's  the  point.  They  're 
not  your  sort.  They're  not  good  enough,  and  it's  only 
your  being  too  fine  to  see  what  they  are  that  gets  you 
mixed  up  with  them."  He  believed  that;  she  had  been  too 
fine  for  Sieffert  and  she  was  too  fine  for  Trudeau. 

"You  must  get  out  of  this.  I  must  get  you  out,"  he 
repeated.  He  did  not  know  how  much  of  the  appeal  she 
had  for  him  at  the  moment  was  due  to  recent  tears  and 
the  f railing  effect  of  the  wisteria  pinafore.  He  walked  up 
and  down  in  a  glow  of  indignation  and  protectiveness,  and 
at  last  he  took  her  gently  by  the  arms.  "  I  must  get  you 
out  right  away.  The  reporter  will  be  after  you  in  an  hour 
.  .  .  You  put  on  your  hat  and  come  away  with  me.  We  '11 
lunch  in  some  quiet  place,  and  go  out  to  the  park.  You 
must  not  —  you  positively  must  not  see  any  newspaper 
people  to-day." 

She  went  very  prettily;  few  women  could  resist  the 
flattery  of  an  attractive  young  man  who  cuts  his  employer 
half  a  day  in  her  interest.  Virginia  in  a  tailored  suit,  her 
beauty  subdued  by  consternation,  lost  every  taint  of 
theatricality.  There  was  nothing  Virginia  hated  so  much 
as  to  miss  her  cue,  and  if,  as  the  critics  said,  Andre"  Tru 
deau  had  turned  out  not  a  playwright,  then  she  had 
missed  it  —  oh,  unforgivably.  But  it  would  npt  be  herself 
that  Virginia  would  n't  forgive;  it  would  be  Andre*. 

They  went  out  to  the  Cliff  House  after  lunch  and 


318  THE  FORD 

walked  past  the  bathers  far  down  the  beach  and  lost 
themselves  amid  the  dunes.  The  lazy  reach  of  the  sand, 
the  cradling  swing  of  the  breakers,  and  the  veiled  sun 
suited  Virginia's  mood.  She  felt  relaxed  after  the  strain  of 
the  production  and  the  high  faith  with  which  she  had 
kept  the  suggestion  of  failure  at  bay.  She  snuggled  in  the 
sand  at  Kenneth's  shoulder  and  felt  the  soreness  of  the 
past  few  days  penetrated  by  the  comforting  warmth  of  a 
wholly  feminine  ascendancy.  He  let  her  see  that  as  Vir 
ginia  she  charmed  him  infinitely  more  than  as  Trudeau's 
leading  lady;  incidentally  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon 
he  unbosomed  himself  of  all  that  he  had  felt  and  done  at 
Palomitas.  If  he  referred  at  all  to  the  obvious  fate  of 
"The  Battle,"  it  was  only  to  let  her  see  that  it  meant 
neither  more  nor  less  to  him  than  that  she  stayed  in  his 
vicinity.  They  had  dinner  at  the  Cliff  House  and  went 
straight  to  the  theater.  Of  all  that  might  have  been  said 
under  the  circumstances  by  a  young  lady  and  gentleman 
but  one  deserves  chronicle. 

Reluctantly,  he  let  her  go  at  the  stage  door,  in  view  of 
the  tremendous  lark  it  had  been  for  them  to  be  so  together 
in  the  face  of  other  calls  on  their  attention. 

"We'll  liave  more  ©f  'them  when  you  get  this  con 
founded  play  off  your -hands."  He  gave  those  same  hands 
a  squeeze.  "  You  don't  know  how  I've  missed  you." 

"If  I'd  only  realized  how  you  felt  about  things"  — 
She  broke  off,  leaving  him  to  infer  that  in  that  case  things 
might  have  been  entirely  different.  No  doubt  she  thought 
so;  no  doubt  she  was  in  a  measure  right. 

That  was  on  Friday  of  the  first  week  of  "The  Battle." 
From  Saturday  until  Monday  evening  Kenneth  was  out 
of  town  on  business.  Tuesday  afternoon  Ellis  Trudeau 


THE  FORD  319 

called  him  up  by  telephone;  her  voice  was  frightened,  but 
declined  to  give  him  any  clue  to  the  urgency  of  her  request 
that  he  would  come  to  see  her  immediately.  He  did  up  his 
work  as  quickly  as  possible  and  found  her  wringing  her 
hands  in  her  plain  little  sitting-room  with  a  contained  and 
quiet  desperation. 

"I  was  afraid  you  wouldn't  get  here  before  Andy 
comes  back  —  he's  trying  to  catch  her  —  Virginia.  I 
thought  you  might  know  —  she's  gone  away." 

"  Gone  —  where?" 

"  How  do  I  know?  How  does  anybody  know  what  that 
kind  of  woman  does."  It  was  the  first  touch  of  bitterness 
that  he  had  heard  from  her.  " She's  gone  and  left  Andy 
in  the  lurch  with  his  play  —  she's  gone  and  left  him!" 

She  grew  quieter  under  questioning.  The  play  had  been 
going  better.  Miss  Lovinsky  had  been  within  her  reckon 
ing  as  to  the  value  of  her  kind  of  publicity.  The  audi 
ence  had  picked  up.  And  quite  unexpectedly  that  after 
noon  Andy  had  received  a  note  saying  that  Virginia  had 
gone  away.  Andy  had  rushed  off,  —  to  the  Studio,  she 
thought,  and  to  see  Miss  Brooke,  Virginia's  understudy. 
Before  everything  there  was  the  play.  They  thrashed  it 
over  two  or  three  times  without  making  anything  more 
of  it;  they  were  disposed  to  lay  a  great  deal  at  the  door  of 
Miss  Lovinsky.  And  in  the  midst  of  it  Andre*  Trudeau 
came  back.  He  came  in  looking  utterly  done;  and  at  the 
sight  of  Kenneth  the  dull  smears  of  color  on  either  cheek 
flared  scarlet. 

"So,"  he  said,  "you  Ve  come  to  see  the  effect  of  your 
work,  have  you?  You  did  n't  like  my  expose*  of  your 
class  and  your  employer's  .  .  .  you  thought  you  would 
spike  my  guns,  did  you  .  .  .  you  damn  bourgeois!"  His 


320  THE  FORD 

voice  dripped  with  fury;  all  of  his  face  that  was  not  scarlet 
was  dead  white.  Like  a  sword  the  question  leaped  out  of 
him,  —  "What  have  you  done  with  her?  What  have  you 
done—" 

"Andy!  Andy!  Mr.  Brent  had  n't  anything  to  do  with 
it.  He  did  n't  even  know  — " 

"No.  He  didn't  know  that  I  knew  of  his  sneaking, 
undermining  tricks  —  trying  to  break  up  my  play  be 
cause  there's  too  much  truth  in  it  for  his  stomach!  Oh, 
there's  a  lot  of  things  he  does  n't  know."  He  gave  Brent 
no  opening  for  an  answer,  and  yet  the  other's  silence 
seemed  to  enrage  him  the  more.  "  Thought  she  was  too 
good  for  me  .  .  .  Did  n't  know  that  she  was  mine  .  .  . 
MINE,  I  tell  you.  .  .  .  Could  n't  take  her  from  me  hon 
estly  like  a  man  .  .  .  took  her  by  a  trick."  He  shuddered 
sick,  and  the  others  waited  on  the  progress  of  his  rage  as 
on  a  man  afflicted.  "Take  her,"  he  said,  pitifully,  "take 
my  leavings!"  He  retched  once  like  a  man  drunken. 

"Andy!  Andy ! "  She  was  at  his  side,  tender,  imploring; 
she  entreated  him  dumbly  with  her  hands.  "Andy,  you 
don't  know  what  you  are  saying!  " 

Suddenly  he  wheeled  on  them  both.  "  I  '11  get  her  back, 
damn  you,  I'll  get  her  .  .  ."  He  choked  and  relaxed 
weakly  on  the  girl's  shoulder.  She  turned  to  Brent  with 
a  frightened  cry;  before  any  of  them  she  had  seen  that 
his  lips  were  flecked  with  blood. 


XI 

BY  the  time  Anne  reached  the  city  in  response  to  Kenneth's 
telegram,  he  had  had  time  to  realize  that  his  impulse  to 
send  for  her  had  been  quite  as  much  on  his  own  account 
as  on  account  of  anything  that  had  happened  to  the  Tru- 
deaus,  and  to  reflect  that  he  could  never  really  tell  her 
what  it  was  that  had  put  him  so  acutely  in  need  of  her. 
He  was  relieved  that  she  found  excuse  enough  in  Ellis's 
need  and  took  hold  of  matters  there  with  a  high  hand. 
Andre*  she  packed  off  to  a  hospital.  The  case  called  for 
expert  nursing;  more  than  anything  else  it  called  for 
obliviousness  to  the  occasion  of  his  plight,  which  only 
the  impersonal  hospital  service  could  throw  consolingly 
about  his  still  raw  and  aching  egotism. 

"Give  him  a  good  nurse,  and  a  pretty  one,"  Anne  had 
said  to  the  house  physician,  and  as  an  afterthought,  - 
"one  who  won't  lose  her  head." 

The  physician  surveyed  her  cool  firmness  with  satis 
faction.  "You'd  make  a  corking  nurse  yourself,"  he  said. 

Anne  shook  her  head;  like  all  perfectly  well  people,  she 
had  a  secret  conviction  that  sickness  was  n't  in  the  least 
necessary  if  only  you  kept  a  hand  on  yourself.  Her  next 
step  was  to  close  up  "The  Battle." 

There  had  been  a  check  in  Virginia's  note,  rather  a 
magnificent  one,  that  must  have  left  Virginia  embar 
rassed  on  her  own  account.  The  girls  had  found  it  in 
Andre's  pocket. 

Ellis  shrunk  back.  "Andy  can't  touch  it  now!" 

"Oh,  come,"  said  Anne,  "if  things  were  the  other  way 


322  THE  FORD 

about  and  your  brother  had  left  Virginia  in  the  lurch,  with 
the  play  on  her  hands,  you  'd  think  paying  his  share  of  the 
loss  would  be  the  least  he  could  do  about  it.  Anyway,  you 
would  n't  want  him  to  leave  it  for  Mrs.  Dickman  to  pay, 
and  it  comes  to  her  in  the  end  if  Dickman  does  n't  get 
his." 

Ellis  surrendered.  "You  always  think  things  out  so 
much  further  than  anybody  else,"  she  sighed,  and  set  her 
softly  folded  lips,  "but  you  can't  think  anything  out  that 
will  make  me  think  Andy  could  take  anything  for  him 
self." 

"You  don't  know  me,"  declared  Anne;  "I've  already 
got  it  thought  out  that  it  would  be  fairer  for  Virginia  to 
pay  his  hospital  bill  than  for  you  to  pay  it."  But  she  made 
no  objection  to  Ellis's  taking  the  work,  which  Kline  and 
Kauser  kept  open  for  her,  the  day  that  Andre*  went  to  the 
hospital.  "It  will  keep  her  from  worrying,"  she  said  to 
Kenneth;  "  I  'm  going  to  have  her  in  Summerfield  with  me 
as  soon  as  we  can  dispose  of  the  brother.  I  must  have 
somebody;  the  ranch  and  the  office  together  are  more 
than  I  can  manage." 

And  having  paid  off  everybody  and  closed  up  every 
thing  so  far  as  Virginia's  check  would  do  it,  she  had  an 
evening  to  give  to  her  brother. 

"Now,"  she  invited,  "just  how  much  did  you  have  to 
do  with  this  whole  business?" 

It  was  a  relief  to  have  her  begin,  but  that  was  not  quite 
the  way  to  go  about  it.  If  she  had  only  said,  "How  much 
has  this  business  to  do  with  you  — ?" 

"What  makes  you  think  I  had  anything  to  do  with  it?  " 
he  fenced. 

"Well,  from  what  Virginia  said  — " 


THE  FORD  323 

" Virginia!"  He  could  only  echo  the  word  in  astonish 
ment. 

Anne  nodded.  " She's  there  at  Summerfield,  with  her 
mother.  From  what  she  said  I  gathered  you  had  every 
thing  to  do  with  her  throwing  up  the  whole  business." 

"Oh,  that!  The  play  was  a  flat  failure.  And  all  that 
rotten  publicity  -  "He  gave  her  an  account  of  the  par 
ticular  " rottenness"  of  Miss  Lovinsky.  " That  bunch! 
Publicity's  their  dope;  they'd  die  without  it.  It  was  the 
only  thing  Virginia  could  do,  to  cut  and  run." 

"Virginia  was  as  keen  as  anybody  for  the  kind  of  pub 
licity  she  liked,"  Anne  reminded  him.  "Virginia  knew 
what  they  were  when  she  went  in  with  them;  she'll  have 
to  have  a  better  excuse  for  kicking  over  the  board  than 
that  comes  to.  What  I  am  trying  to  find  out  is  whether 
you  gave  her  a  better  excuse." 

He  did  n't  know  what  she  meant  by  that  and  said  so. 
He  would  have  liked  to  say  further  that  he  did  n't  see  why 
his  sister  should  jump  on  him;  why  Trudeau  could  n't 
have  provided  the  excuse;  why  it  was  n't  excuse  enough 
for  Virginia  to  have  got  to  the  place  where  she  simply 
could  n't  stand  him.  But  he  had  no  idea  how  much  his 
sister  knew  of  what  Virginia  had  "stood"  already.  He 
found  he  could  n't  tell  her  any  of  the  things  that  Trudeau 
had  voided  in  the  sickness  of  rage  and  jealousy.  He  would 
never  be  able  to  tell  anybody.  He  was  sick  himself  when 
he  thought  of  them. 

But  you  never  could  tell  about  women.  Ellis  he  thought 
would  have  been  too  much  alarmed  about  her  brother's 
health  to  have  caught  what  he  was  saying;  it  was  n't  in 
the  code  that  girls  like  Ellis  Trudeau  should  understand 
things  like  that  even  when  they  heard  them  .  .  .  still  you 


324  THE  FORD 

never  could  tell.  And  Anne  had  talked  with  Virginia  .  .  . 
women  told  each  other  everything  .  .  .  things  that  men 
—  the  right  sort  of  men  —  would  n't  tell  to  anybody  .  .  . 
So  he  came  around  at  last  to  saying,  "I  don't  know  what 
you  mean  by  a  better  excuse." 

'•'Well,"  Anne  considered,  "  self  -preservation  is  always 
a  perfectly  good  excuse.  I  mean  that  when  a  woman  goes 
into  things  that  involve  the  personal  welfare  of  other  peo 
ple,  she  can't  kick  over  the  board  just  because  she  finds 
she  does  n't  like  it.  But  when  she  finds  that  going  on  with 
something  she  has  begun  is  going  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
her  getting  the  best  thing  in  life,  what  everybody  has  al 
ways  agreed  is  the  best  thing,  I  suppose  she  can  cut  and 
run,  without  being  blamed  for  it." 

This  was  both  explicit  and  ambiguous;  for  while  it  left 
him  in  doubt  as  to  how  much  Anne  knew  of  the  things 
Virginia  had  done  in  her  private  character,  it  applied  per 
fectly  to  all  that  everybody  knew  she  had  done  as  a 
Friend  of  Labor  and  as  leading  lady  in  the  Democratic 
Drama.  If  he  let  it  go  at  that,  Kenneth  felt  he  need  n't 
shrink  from  discussing  his  own  part  in  separating  Vir 
ginia  from  what,  he  had  told  her  that  day  on  the  dunes, 
threatened  all  the  things  that  his  sort  of  men  valued  most 
in  women.  On  that  safe  supposition  he  began  to  tell  Anne 
all  that  he  had  said. 

They  were  sitting  in  his  own  room  after  dinner;  having 
dined  early  to  let  Ellis  Trudeau  get  off  to  the  hospital  to 
tuck  Andy  in  for  the  night,  and  the  soft  gloom  of  the  eve 
ning  almost  shut  them  from  each  other.  Under  such  cir 
cumstances,  further  mitigated  by  a  good  cigar,  a  man  may 
talk  freely  to  his  older  and  only  sister.  He  put  it  to  Anne 
that  if  Virginia's  recoil  from  the  situation  had  in  any  way 


THE  FORD  325 

been  affected  by  his  appeal  to  the  traditional,  intrinsic 
niceness  of  young  women,  he  would  take  his  share  of  the 
responsibility  light-heartedly. 

"I  suppose,"  said  Anne  thoughtfully,  "it  all  depends 
on  what  Virginia  thinks  you  meant  by  it." 

"Ah,  what  does  she  think?" 

"She  thinks,"  said  Anne,  "that  you  want  to  marry 
her."  Waves  of  his  shocked  silence  must  have  reached 
her  through  the  dusk  to  soften  the  note  of  Anne's  final, 
belated  inquiry,  "Do  you,  Ken?" 

"I  don't  know,  Anne  —  I  —  I  never  thought  of  it." 

"Well,"  deliberated  Anne,  "I  guess  we'd  better  not 
talk  of  it  again  until  you  have." 

Perhaps  Anne  knew  as  well  as  anybody  that  it  was  not 
strictly  true  that  Kenneth  had  n't  thought  of  marrying 
Virginia;  rather  that  he  had  thought  of  himself  as  being 
married  to  her,  but  thought  of  it  left-handedly,  without 
letting  himself  take  notice.  He  had  thought  of  it  the  day 
he  went  down  to  the  Studio  to  rescue  her  from  the  doubt 
ful  offices  of  Miss  Lovinsky,  thought  of  it  as  the  prac 
tical  obstacle  in  the  way  of  just  snatching  an  attractive 
young  woman  from  a  parlous  situation  and  shutting  her 
up  in  the  round  tower  of  her  own  preciousness.  Society 
did  n't  permit  a  young  man  to  do  so  until  he  was  in  a  posi 
tion  to  maintain  her  in  it,  as  against  all  comers.  Until  this 
moment  Kenneth  had  made  himself  believe  that  the 
objection  which  persisted  in  his  mind  against  marrying 
Virginia  was  quite  the  general  prohibition  he  had  him 
self  set  against  marrying  any  one  until  he  found  himself 
quite  and  unmistakably  "in"  the  game  of  Big  Business. 
And  on  top  of  this  creditably  reasoned  version  of  his  in 
decisions  had  come  the  rage  of  possession,  into  which  he 


326  THE  FORD 

had  been  thrown  by  Trudeau's  revelations,  as  the  most 
unprecedented  thing  in  his  experience. 

His  first  instinctive  impulses  had  been  to  stop  the  fel 
low's  mouth,  and  to  stop  it  finally  and  more  effectively 
than  the  hemorrhage  had  done;  but,  such  has  civilization 
made  us,  he  had  found  himself  instead  helping  Ellis  to 
lay  her  brother  carefully  on  the  couch,  and  telephoning 
frantically  for  the  doctor.  His  personal  animus  toward 
Trudeau  had  not  lasted  beyond  the  moment  when  he  had 
seen  the  fellow  hanging  in  a  faint  on  his  sister's  shoulder. 
But  the  things  he  had  said,  they  must  be  stamped  out, 
utterly  discredited;  and  no  way  occurred  to  Brent  at  the 
moment  but  to  snatch  Virginia  to  himself  and  dispossess 
even  the  idea  of  the  playwright  by  a  public  and  exclusive 
possession.  Virgin  youth  as  he  was,  there  was  no  doubt  in 
his  mind  as  to  the  nature  of  that  possession.  He  had  had, 
in  the  two  or  three  hours  succeeding  Trudeau's  outburst, 
as  he  had  paced  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  lodging,  in 
case  Ellis  might  need  him,  a  revelation  of  the  force  and 
reality  of  a  great  many  of  our  stock  phrases  of  sex  that 
rendered  him  by  turns  hot,  ashamed,  and  rampageous. 
Had  Virginia  been  at  hand  there  is  no  doubt  he  would  so 
have  snatched  her  out  of  the  pit  which  Trudeau's  admis 
sion  had  seemed  to  dig  for  her,  would  have  obliterated  by 
the  surge  of  his  own  passions  every  track  which  led  be 
tween  it  and  her,  as  the  wave  destroys  a  slimy  sea-print  on 
the  beaches.  Out  of  the  reach  of  that  blind  faith  of  passion 
to  re-create  and  reestablish  Virginia  had  removed  her 
self,  and  by  as  much  as  she  could  not  be  his  she  remained, 
in  his  mind,  something  of  Trudeau's.  Sitting  there  in  the 
dusking  room  with  his  sister,  the  sudden  tumult  of  his 
blood  deafened  him,  .  .  .  things  Virginia  had  said  .  .  . 


THE  FORD  327 

"  Women  are  n't  like  that  —  they  can't  wait  always  .  .  . " 
things  he  had  noted  between  her  and  the  playwright, 
looks  .  .  .  touches  .  .  . 

He  had  told  himself  several  times  since  that  a  man  who 
would  say  what  Trudeau  had  said  about  a  woman  would 
also  lie  about  it.  This  was  the  code  of  the  world  of  men 
as  he  knew  it.  He  recalled  how  he  had  complained  to 
Frank  once  of  the  slighting  way  young  MacRea  had  in 
speaking  of  the  blonde  stenographer,  and  Frank  had  said, 
"It  does  n't  mean  anything  so  long  as  MacRea  says  it. 
Mac  is  just  stringing  you.  If  there  were  anything  be 
tween  the  girl  and  him,  you'd  never  hear  a  word  out  of 
him."  And  true  enough,  after  she  had  left  the  office  Mac 
Rea  had  never  mentioned  her.  Oh,  there  was  no  doubt 
about  it,  the  sort  of  a  man  who  would  tell  was  n't  the  sort 
to  be  believed. 

And  on  the  other  hand,  his  intelligence  warned  him  that 
in  Trudeau's  class  the  rule  of  his  own  would  n't  neces 
sarily  hold.  People  like  that  told  everything  —  more 
than  anybody  thanked  them  for  —  dissipated  their  souls 
in  confession.  Had  n't  Virginia  just  told  Anne  that  she 
thought  Kenneth  wanted  to  marry  her?  ...  If  he  only 
knew  how  much  more  she  had  told!  But,  of  course,  if 
there  was  a  question  of  marrying,  he  could  n't  ask.  If  he 
had  any  idea  of  making  Virginia  his  wife,  he  could  n't 
discuss  her  even  with  his  sister.  As  if  she  had  accepted 
the  situation  on  that  proviso,  Anne  began  to  talk  of 
affairs  at  Tierra  Longa. 

Anne  had  been  at  Surnmerfield,  as  he  knew,  when  his 
wire  reached  her,  and  her  news  of  the  valley  was  three 
days  old,  but  pertinent. 

"Elwood's  game  is  about  over,"  she  said,  "and,  I  sus- 


328  THE  FORD 

pect,  before  he  has  played  out  his  hand.  He  played  it  well 
as  far  as  he  went.  All  sorts  of  rumors  got  about,  of  local 
development,  power  plants,  and  direct  railroad  connec 
tions.  People  got  a  notion  that  Elwood  had  it  in  his 
power  to  bring  these  things  about,  and  if  they  got  be 
hind  him  somehow  and  gave  him  their  options  as  a  sort  of 
vote  of  confidence,  it  would  come  back  to  them  in  the 
final  division  of  profits.  You  know  how  the  valley  people 
are! 

"  And  then  all  in  a  minute  things  changed.  Jevens  was 
in  liquor  and  talked  too  much  for  one  thing,  but  it  was 
those  Maxwells,  who  had  the  old  Crane  place,  who  were 
the  cause  of  the  slip-up.  They  were  heavily  mortgaged 
and  everybody  was  expecting  a  foreclosure.  Elwood,  who 
has  n't  been  able  to  get  in  under  the  Town  Ditch,  offered 
to  lend  them  the  money;  offered  it  in  that  free-and- 
easy,  I  'm-a-good-f  ellow-and-you  're-another  way  he  has, 
and  they  surprised  him  by  turning  it  down.  ...  It  seems 
Mr.  Maxwell  had  had  a  little  legacy  from  somewhere 
back  East  that  they  had  n't  told  anybody  about;  but 
not  being  able  to  find  out  made  Elwood  uneasy." 

Kenneth  recognized  a  familiar  situation;  he  knew  how 
the  Old  Man  and  his  confreres  sniffed  the  faintest  taint 
of  " outside  capital,"  keen  as  buzzards  for  carrion.  "But 
it  was  a  mistake  if  he  let  them  see  that  he  was  afraid," 
he  concluded. 

"It's  the  kind  of  mistake  he  made,"  Anne  told  him; 
"I  don't  know  just  what  happened;  we're  not  very  close 
to  the  valley  people  at  Palomitas;  but  I  think  he  made 
some  kind  of  a  gallery  play  for  sympathy  against  an  out 
sider." 

"That's  Elwood,"  Kenneth  agreed;  "if  he  meant  to 


THE  FORD  329 

cut  their  throats  he  'd  want  their  sympathy  while  he  was 
doing  it.  I've  seen  him  get  it." 

" Not  with  Tierra  Longans,"  Anne  was  certain;  " out 
side  capital  means  competition  and  that  means  higher 
prices.  Even  after  the  Maxwells  told,  there  were  plenty 
who  did  n't  believe  them.  Elwood  will  get  no  more  op 
tions  at  the  old  prices,  and  the  more  he  offers  now,  the 
more  they  will  suspect  him.  The  point  is  that  if  anybody, 
who  is  behind  Elwood  or  opposed  to  him,  really  means  to 
start  something  in  Tierra  Longa,  he's  blocking  his  own 
game  now  by  keeping  dark  about  it.  If  Mr.  Rickart  is  in 
it,  one  way  or  another,  —  and  I  don't  see  how  he  can 
keep  out  of  it,  —  he  could  carry  the  whole  valley  with  him 
by  a  straight-out  declaration.  A  little  more  of  this  un 
certainty  and  he'll  have  them  stampeded.  That  's  one 
reason  why  I  came  up ;  I  wanted  to  have  a  talk  with  him.'; 

Rickart  was  in  Chicago;  it  would  be  another  week, 
Kenneth  said,  before  he  was  expected.  "Well,  then, 
you'll  have  to  tell  him."  Anne  considered  thoughtfully, 
"Tell  him  as  coming  from  me  ...  though  that's  almost 
too  formal.  I  could  have  made  him  think  he  had  found 
it  out  .  .  .  anyway,  tell  him." 

"Don't  you  suppose  Jamieson  tells  him  every  thing  - 
if  he  does  n't  hear  it  direct  from  Elwood?" 

"Jamieson  is  a  —  an  Englishman.  He  doesn't  know 
any  more  what  the  people  of  Tierra  Longa  think  than  he 
knows  what  the  buzzards  are  thinking,  flying  over." 

"And  you  think  -  "  Kenneth  waited  for  her  to  fill  out 
the  suggestion.  If  he  had  but  known,  he  was  nearer  the 
reason  for  Anne's  urgency  that  Rickart  should  declare 
himself  than  she  intended  to  admit  to  him.  The  truth 
was  that  Anne  did  n't  know  what  she  thought.  For  the 


330  THE  FORD 

first  time  in  her  clear-cut  life,  Anne  had  found  herself 
unable  to  think  definitely  about  a  man  because  of  what 
he  was  able  to  make  her  feel  about  him,  and  the  certainty 
that  this  was  the  case  humiliated  her.  Elwood  had  called 
twice  at  Palomitas  and  she  had  ridden  with  him  to  Tierra 
Rondo.  They  had  climbed  to  the  edge  of  the  hollow,  and 
looking  down  on  it  had  told  each  other  freely  all  they 
thought  of  the  possibilities  of  river  storage;  she  had  talked 
of  it  as  an  old  dream  of  her  father's  and  he  had  talked  of 
it  as  a  new  dream  of  his  own  growing  out  of  his  long 
session  of  idleness;  and  neither  of  these  two  astute  busi 
ness  people  had  been  able  to  keep  from  the  other  that  it 
would  be  a  glorious  sort  of  thing  to  do  together. 

Anne  did  not  trust  Elwood;  so  far  as  she  knew  him,  she 
did  not  approve  of  him;  but  all  the  time  she  was  aware 
of  the  glitter  of  his  eye,  his  easy  seat  as  he  rode,  and  the 
quick  play  of  his  intelligence.  The  things  his  hand  had 
said  to  her  as  he  helped  her  up  the  hill  had  not  been  at 
all  the  sort  of  thing  it  had  said  the  first  time  she  had  gone 
seeking  touch  with  him,  as  it  brought  the  hot  tide  to  her 
cheek,  sitting  there  in  the  dark,  to  remember.  She  rallied 
herself  to  support  the  evidence  of  her  intelligence  against 
the  secret  hope  that  when  the  Old  Man  declared  himself, 
it  would  prove  to  be  in  a  direction  that  would  remove  the 
necessity  for  opposing  herself  to  Elwood. 

"I  think,  from  the  effort  he  is  making  to  smooth 
things  over,  that  Elwood  has  n't  got  all  he  wants  yet, 
that  there 's  some  really  important  reason  why  he  does  n't 
come  out  directly  and  tell  what  he  is  after." 

"Think  he's  found  out  about  my  filing?" 

"I've  no  reason  to."  She  did  n't  think  it  necessary  to 
let  Kenneth  know  that  she  had  accounted  for  his  last 


THE  FORD  331 

visit  by  permitting  Elwood  to  think  that  it  had  been 
prompted  by  a  desire  for  the  company  of  the  very  pretty 
girl  who  was  staying  with  his  sister.  It  was  a  natural 
sort  of  thing  for  any  one  to  think,  who  had  seen  Ellis  Tru- 
deau  and  Kenneth  riding  off  together,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  everybody  on  the  ranch  did  more  or  less  think  it. 
And  Anne  had  her  own  reason  for  not  wishing  to  discuss 
her  personal  impressions  of  Elwood.  She  led  the  talk 
away  after  that  to  family  concern  and  finally  to  make 
some  natural  inquiry  after  Frank. 

Ordinarily  Frank  conducted  himself  as  though  Anne's 
visits  were  expressly  arranged  for  the  purpose  of  letting 
him  see  a  great  deal  of  her,  so  that  a  reference  to  the 
tennis  tournament  of  Del  Monte  had  been  part  of  Ken 
neth's  greeting  to  her,  as  a  way  of  accounting  for  Frank's 
failure  to  claim  his  customary  share  of  her  attention.  If 
she  came  back  to  it  now,  it  was  apparently  only  to  round 
out  her  trip  with  a  touch  of  his  affairs,  such  affairs  being 
for  the  moment  chiefly  in  the  small  but  extremely  com 
petent  hands  of  Miss  Rutgers  of  New  York. 

"I've  a  notion  old  Frank's  a  goner,  this  time,"  was 
Kenneth's  friendly  summing-up.  "Though  I  don't  sup 
pose  anything  is  settled  yet,  or  you'd  be  the  first  to 
hear  of  it."  This  was  his  way  of  putting  his  private 
conviction  that  his  sister  could  have  coppered  old  Frank 
if  she  had  tried  for  him,  but  Anne  was  n't  the  marrying 
sort. 

"Oh,  yes,  I'd  know,"  she  agreed,  matter-of-factly. 
He  noticed  she  did  n't  say  "hear"  -  well,  she  was  cold 
enough  to  old  Frank  to  have  one  of  her  flashes  about  him; 
he'd  noticed  she  never  had  them  about  people  she  was 
really  fond  of. 


332  THE  FORD 

"It's  exactly  the  kind  of  marriage  I've  always  ex 
pected  Frank  to  make/'  she  was  saying;  "I  mean,  with 
all  she  stands  for;  beauty,  family,  social  prestige.  Men 
like  Frank  don't  come  very  close  to  women;  don't  have 
much  sense  of  reality  about  them.  They  are  very  likely 
to  pass  right  over  the  sort  of  woman  who  is  all  the  things 
they  think  it  is  desirable  for  a  woman  to  be,  and  take  the 
sort  that  is  dressed  up  and  certified  to  be  refined,  exclu 
sive,  and  all  that." 

"Oh,  Miss  Rutgers  is  the  real  thing,  I  should  think. 
I  Ve  met  her."  Really  it  almost  sounded  as  if  Anne  meant 
to  be  catty. 

"Well,  let's  hope,  for  Frank's  sake,  she's  not  too  real. 
There's  a  limit  to  what  Frank  can  live  up  to  in  the  way 
of  refinement." 

No,  decidedly,  if  she  could  analyze  him  like  that,  his 
sister  was  n't  likely  to  be  hipped  by  the  news  of  young 
Rickart's  engagement. 

Anne  got  back  to  her  work  next  day  without  again 
mentioning  Virginia,  and  the  moment  he  had  let  her  go 
Kenneth  realized  that  he  should  at  least  have  pressed  her 
for  some  clue.  He  quite  understood  that  when  a  young  man 
has  come  to  the  point  of  letting  a  girl  think  that  he  wants 
to  marry  her,  there  should  n't  be  any  apparent  hesitancy 
about  his  next  step.  It  might  be  overlooked  by  Anne  — 
who  was  acquainted  with  Virginia's  capacity  for  thinking 
things  on  the  slenderest  grounds  —  that  he  had  n't  met 
the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  he  wanted  to  marry 
Virginia  with  an  instant  affirmative.  But  would  Vir 
ginia  overlook  it?  Was  n't  her  flight  from  Trudeau  a 
sufficient  indication  of  what  she  wanted!  Could  he  do 
any  less  than  follow  the  invitation  of  that  flight  and  cover 


THE  FORD  333 

the  publicity  of  her  preference  by  a  public  possession. 
For  it  was  public.  Trudeau  had  understood. 

It  blazed  upon  him  in  retrospect  that  Ellis  had  come  to 
some  conclusion  about  her  brother  and  Virginia  about  the 
time  of  her  return  from  Palomitas.  He  recalled  that  he 
had  n't  seen  her  at  the  Studio  since  .  .  .  and  then  her 
sudden  sally  for  employment  .  .  .  and  what  Anne  had 
said!  ".  .  .  Men  have  been  paying  women  for  things 
like  that  .  .  ." 

Had  there  been  things  known  to  Anne  so  early,  or  was 
it  just  one  of  those  blinding  flashes  of  hers  which  outran 
the  fact  by  as  much  as  the  unf ormulated  wish  outran  it? 

"Why  should  n't  a  woman  pay  a  man  — "  Oh,  God! 
And  being  in  bed  at  the  time,  staring  sleeplessly  into  the 
dark,  young  Brent  rolled  on  his  face  and  bit  his  fingers. 

Curiously  the  rush  of  conviction  carried  him  to  Vir 
ginia's  side.  They  knew,  those  two  clear-headed  young 
women;  and  the  divine  chivalry  of  youth  prompted  him 
to  raise  between  their  knowledge  and  Virginia  the  aegis 
of  compelling  faith.  Oh,  there  was  no  doubt  about  it,  he 
wanted  to  marry  Virginia,  but  he  wanted  to  marry  her 
now!  He  could  have  done  it  then  and  there  and  had  it 
triumphantly  over  with.  What  he  could  n't  do  was  to 
spend  hours,  even  days,  in  the  process.  He  thought  of 
his  work  and  the  distance  to  Summerfield.  He  thought 
of  weddings;  he  was  under  the  impression  that  they  took 
a  vast  deal  of  arranging;  thought  of  Virginia's  mother, 
her  commonness,  her  noisy  affectionateness,  and  her  dis 
position  to  insist  on  a  great  deal  of  talk. 

At  the  idea  of  explaining  to  Mrs.  Burke  his  necessity 
for  marrying  Virginia  and  marrying  her  quickly,  Kenneth 
sank  back  into  bed  —  he  had  been  sitting  on  the  edge  of  it 


334  THE  FORD 

with  some  notion  of  getting  forward  with  the  business 
of  marrying  Virginia  —  and  covered  his  head  with  the 
blankets. 

In  marriage  as  in  finance  it  seemed  that  nothing  was 
simple;  you  could  n't  just  pick  out  your  girl  and  your  job 
and  have  them  by  being  able  to  please  one  and  do  the 
other. .  . .  All  sorts  of  stupid  people.  ...  all  sorts  of  shifts 
and  waits  and  indirection  .  .  .  Nothing  was  simple, 
nothing  square  !  .  .  .  not  even  Virginia.  .  .  .  How  was  he 
to  know  what  she  wanted  of  him,  going  off  like  that? 
He  perceived  suddenly  how  true  it  was  that  women  were 
the  real  movers  of  the  game.  Here  he  was,  led  up  to  the 
crisis  of  his  personal  life  and  left  hanging  in  the  air.  .  .  . 
Anne  ought  to  have  talked;  if  she  knew  anything  at  all, 
she  knew  that  he  did  n't  know  what  was  expected  of  him. 

The  truth  was  that  Anne  knew  very  little  except  what 
she  had  guessed  through  a  long  familiarity  with  Vir 
ginia's  methods.  That  sudden  flight  to  the  maternal 
nest,  that  swift  resumption  of  maidenly  preciousness  and 
alarms;  what  could  they  mean  except  the  rising  some 
where  on  Virginia's  horizon  of  the  prospect  of  honorable 
marriage?  There  had  been  an  hour's  conversation  be 
tween  those  two,  in  which  whatever  conclusions  she  came 
to  about  Andre*  Trudeau,  Anne  at  least  came  to  the  con 
clusion  that  she  must  keep  it  to  herself. 

Anne  loved  her  brother.  It  is  possible  she  understood 
him,  and  on  this  occasion,  at  least,  used  toward  him  that 
feminuie  indirection  which  all  her  life  she  had  disdained 
with  other  men.  If  she  left  Kenneth  to  work  out  his  rela 
tion  to  Virginia  unaided,  it  was  probably  because  she 
knew  that  that  was  the  way  to  have  him  work  it  out  to 
her  satisfaction. 


THE  FORD  335 

Deprived  of  both  his  sister  and  Virginia,  Kenneth  had 
left,  for  his  consolation,  only  Ellis  Trudeau;  and  from  her 
he  was  more  or  less  divided  by  the  nature  of  things. 

He  saw  her  almost  daily;  it  seemed  his  duty  to,  con 
sidering  that  he  had  made  himself  responsible  for  her 
with  Kline  and  Kauser,  and  that  she  was  still  in  great 
anxiety  about  her  brother.  Within  a  week,  however, 
there  was  news. 

"It  is  n't  at  all  what  we  feared,"  she  told  him;  "not 
lungs,  you  know,  it's  only  bronchial."  It  had  been  ar 
ranged  that  Andre"  was  to  go  to  Indio  as  soon  as  he  was 
stronger,  for  the  open-air  treatment,  sleeping  with  very 
little  between  him  and  earth  and  nothing  but  a  blanket 
between  him  and  the  stars. 

He  was  quite  thrilled  by  it;  he  would  expand  his  soul 
in  the  Silent  Places.  Something  notable  in  the  way  of  a 
book  or  a  play  would  come  out  of  this  encounter  of  the 
desert  with  the  literary  temperament. 

"It  is  his  temperament  that  is  mostly  the  matter  with 
him,"  Ellis  explained.  "You  see,  life  is  twice  as  hard  on 
people  with  creative  imaginations.  They  have  all  the 
things  we  have  to  put  up  with,  and  the  other  things  be 
side,  the  —  the  situations  they  —  create."  She  was  able 
to  say  it;  she  was  able  to  look  at  him  quite  directly,  un 
affectedly,  quite  as  though  it  were  all  as  simple  as  it 
sounded.  "They  are  so  real  to  them,  the  things  they 
create,"  she  said;  "they  are  with  Andy.  I've  seen  him 
suffer  ...  I've  seen  him  made  positively  ill  over  things 
that  were  Just  —  sort  of  —  made  up." 

They  were  dining  together,  not  at  any  of  the  resorts 
affected  by  Virginia's  coterie,  which  they  by  common 
consent  had  abandoned,  but  in  a  clean,  light  place,  where 


336  THE  FORD 

there  was  music,  and  well-dressed  men  and  women  com 
ing  and  going,  people  with  obvious,  cheerful  interests. 
It  was  the  best  moment  she  could  have  chosen  to  discuss 
her  brother,  since  it  was  inevitable  they  would  have  to 
discuss  him  sometimes;  but  for  the  life  of  him  Kenneth 
could  n't  help  a  little  stiffness  as  he  said  that  he  supposed 
it  was  so,  but  for  his  part  he  had  to  have  things  real. 

"Yes,  you  would/'  she  agreed,  not  at  all  as  if  there 
were  any  special  merit  in  it.  "It  is  difficult  for  people  like 
you  and  me  to  understand.  I  never  saw  anybody  not  an 
artist  who  could  understand  it,  except  Virginia."  It  was 
the  first  time  her  name  had  been  mentioned  between  them 
since  they  had  last  heard  it  on  Andre*  Trudeau's  blood- 
flecked  lips,  and  it  was  wonderful,  on  the  whole,  how 
naturally  she  said  it,  and  how  at  the  mere  pronouncing 
of  it  a  little  of  the  old  warmth  colored  her  reference. 
"Sometimes,"  she  said,  "I  think  Virginia  is  the  most 
understanding  person  I  know,  except  your  sister.  Her 
going  away  —  I  was  dreadfully  angry  at  first.  It  seemed 
like  desertion  .  .  .  but  that  was  only  my  short-sighted 
ness.  The  play  was  a  failure  .  .  .  they  had  to  get  out  of  it 
somehow;  and  only  Virginia  had  the  sense  to  get  out  of 
it  dramatically." 

"Oh,  if  you  look  at  it  that  way  — 

"We  have  to  —  if  it  has  turned  out  that  way.  You  see 
it  was  just  dragging  out,  leaving  everybody  in  the  dregs  of 
discouragement  —  and  suddenly  Virginia  pulled  it  around 
into  something  else.  Even  the  public  sees  it  as  something 
else  —  the  leading  lady  being  called  away,  and  Andy's 
illness.  Every  day  there's  been  something  in  the  paper 
about  how  he  is  getting  along;  they  are  really  interested. 
Of  course,  it  was  too  bad  of  him  to  make  such  a  fuss  just 


THE  FORD  337 

at  first  —  not  to  see  what  she  meant  by  it."  (It  was  in 
deed,  thought  Kenneth.)  She  sighed.  "  That 's  where  his 
temperament  has  it  in  for  him  —  making  something  up 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment  to  account  for  everything  - 

She  was  looking  at  Kenneth  quite  steadily,  almost  too 
steadily.  But  it  all  might  so  easily  be  so;  it  was  so  con 
foundedly  plausible! 

"  It 's  given  him  something  to  think  about  besides  the 
play;  it's  helped  him  to  get  over  it,"  she  said.  "He's  got 
a  whole  new  set  of  —  imaginations." 

Well,  if  Ellis  Trudeau  was  paying  a  debt  to  Virginia, 
she  did  it  handsomely.  She  had  put  them  all  back  where 
they  were  three  months  ago  .  .  .  nothing  whatever  had 
happened.  Were  n't  women  wonderful  .  .  .  simply  won 
derful  I 

He  was  able,  on  the  strength  of  that  conversation,  to 
take  up  some  phases  of  their  wonderfulness  with  Frank 
when  he  came  back  from  the  tennis  tournament  bursting 
with  health  and  spirits.  They  were  always,  those  two 
after  any  separation,  undisguisedly  glad  to  see  each  other. 
If  there  were  two  or  three  things  which  they  had  not 
talked  out  together,  such  as  Kenneth's  preoccupation 
with  the  problem  of  Labor,  and  his  secret  feeling  about 
the  Old  Man,  it  was  because  they  belonged  to  that  part 
of  their  lives  which,  as  clerk  and  heir  to  T.  Rickart,  they 
could  never  have  together.  On  all  points  where  they 
mutually  touched  they  had  perfect  communication. 
That  evening  in  Frank's  rooms  they  came  naturally  to 
talk  of  women  and  marriage  because  their  minds  were 
full  of  it. 

"The  trouble  is,"  Kenneth  postulated,  "nobody  tells 
you  anything  about  it,  not  anything  important.  For 


338  THE  FORD 

instance,  whether  it  is  something  you  ought  to  think  out, 
like  choosing  a  profession,  or  whether  it  ought  to  just 
happen." 

Frank  was  of  the  opinion  that  any  man  of  any  experi 
ence  at  all,  by  the  time  he  was  old  enough  to  be  married, 
knew  that  it  was  n't  a  thing  which  could  be  let  happen 
without  any  reference  to  the  facts.  " Take  my  case.  I'm 
going  to  have  a  pile  of  money.  .  .  .  Money !  Have  you  any 
idea  what  my  father  is  worth?  I  have  n't  exactly;  but  I 
know  there  are  princes  over  in  Europe  who  have  n't  his 
income.  Well,  that 's  the  biggest  fact  in  my  life.  I  've  got 
to  think  of  that  when  I  marry;  it's  up  to  me  to  choose  a 
wife  who  will  know  what  to  do  with  all  that  money.  She 's 
got  to  be  used  to  money;  she's  got  to  understand  it." 

"If  you  think  money  is  so  important  — ' 

"Would  I  think  a  hump  was  important  if  I  had  it? 
I  've  got  the  money  —  or  at  least  I  will  have  as  soon  as 
Dad  blows  out  —  long  life  to  him!"  He  blew  a  saluta 
tory  ring  of  smoke.  "I'll  have  to  live  in  the  house  with 
it.  There'll  be  three  of  us,  myself,  my  wife,  and  my 
money;  we  Ve  all  got  to  get  along  together." 

This  was  the  sort  of  astuteness  over  which  the  Old  Man 
had  been  accustomed  to  whet  his  delight;  but  to  Kenneth 
it  was  too  much  of  a  special  instance. 

"There  are  times,"  he  insisted,  "when  a  man's  feelings 
can  be  the  biggest  kind  of  a  fact." 

"All  kinds  of  women  can  give  you  feelings,"  Frank 
objected.  He  might  have  added  how  many  kinds  at 
tempted  to  give  them  to  young,  attractive  heirs  of  wealthy 
men.  "Sometimes  I  think  the  kind  that  get  you  going 
easiest  are  the  worst  kind  to  marry  .  .  .  the  kind  that 
plays  the  game  .  .  .  keeps  you  guessing." 


THE  FORD  339 

This  was  an  approach  to  illumination.  If  there  was 
anything  about  Virginia  which  interested  Kenneth  it 
was  the  way  she  kept  him  guessing;  but  he  made  a  stab 
in  self-defense. 

"Is  n't  it  a  woman's  business  to  keep  a  man  stirred 
up  —  her  game,  if  you  put  it  that  way  —  to  keep  him 
stimulated,  inspired?" 

"Not  so  darned  much."  Frank  slid  his  hands  into  his 
pockets  and  elevated  his  feet  comfortably  to  the  window 
ledge.  "Not  if  he's  a  regular  fellow." 

Frank  himself  was  perfectly  regular  as  could  be  deter 
mined  at  a  glance.  His  large,  somewhat  gangling  frame 
had  begun  to  take  on  solidity  without  undue  weight.  He 
had  a  high  color  and  a  big  manner  which  passed  with 
people  like  Miss  Rutgers  for  "Western."  He  was  par 
ticularly  straight  in  the  back  and  conspicuously  well- 
tailored. 

"You  know,  7  think,"  he  delivered,  "that  a  lot  of  this 
stuff  about  women  keeping  men  stimulated  —  being  an 
inspiration,  and  all  that  —  is  mostly  bunk  that  they ' ve 
made  up  between  them;  the  women  because  they  have  to 
do  something  to  keep  in  the  game,  and  the  men  to  hide 
their  general  flabbiness.  Loving  your  wife  and  having 
children  and  getting  your  job  done  is  something  a  regular 
man  ought  to  be  able  to  manage  just  by  himself,  without 
being  eternally  chucked  up  to  it.  Do  you  get  me?" 

Kenneth  supposed  that  a  lot  of  them  did  manage  it; 
how  else  could  you  account  for  the  large  numbers  of  per 
fectly  commonplace  men  and  women  who  were  getting 
married  and  making  a  living  and  having  children  every 
day?  Still,  a  woman  ought  to  be  something  in  a  man's 
life  that  he  could  n't  get  along  without,  else  why  marry 


340  THE  FORD 

at  all?  And  when  a  man  came  to  his  own  personal  case 
he  wanted  something  to  go  upon;  if  he  was  n't  to  trust  to 
his  own  feelings,  what  could  he  trust  to? 

"Find  the  biggest  fact  in  his  life."  Frank  put  it  oracu 
larly.  "If  she  does  n't  square  with  that,  I  don't  care  what 
his  feelings  are,  he  '11  come  a  cropper.  Now,  you  take  my 
case  -  '  What  Frank's  case  amounted  to  was  an  admis 
sion,  as  far  as  a  young  man  can  make  it  without  having 
yet  ascertained  the  views  of  the  young  lady,  that  Miss 
Rutgers  of  New  York  squared,  not  only  with  his  facts,  but 
his  feelings. 

Kenneth  heard  without  taking  note.  For  almost  the 
first  time  he  was  reflecting  that,  while  Frank's  fortune  had 
never  interfered  with  their  affection,  it  did  prevent  their 
coming  together  on  any  permanent  interest  of  their  lives. 
The  biggest  fact  in  Kenneth's  life  was  that  he  did  n't  have 
a  fortune,  and  he  felt  that  such  items  as  that  a  girl 
might  have  been  previously  married  to  one  man  and  have 
had  "an  affair"  with  another  might  seriously  disturb  him 
in  the  process  of  acquiring  a  wife.  Something  nearer  his 
need  was  supplied  by  the  Old  Man,  writing  from  Chicago 
that  Kenneth  was  to  proceed  at  once  to  Tierra  Longa 
and  take  up  the  work  that  Elwood  had  been  doing  there. 
He  was  to  put  himself  in  touch  with  the  farmers,  and  win 
their  confidence;  Elwood,  the  letter  said,  had  unaccount 
ably  fumbled  matters.  Further  instruction  would  reach 
him  by  way  of  Agua  Caliente  where  he  was  to  stay, 
not  to  be  too  far  removed  from  telephone  connection 
with  the  city  office.  If  the  letter  afforded  him  no  clue  to 
the  bearing  of  the  work  that  Rickart  expected  of  him,  it 
at  least  would  bring  him  again  into  touch  with  Virginia. 


XII 

"ABOUT  this  man  Elwood,"  said  Mr.  Baff ;  "it's  this  way, 
the  valley  ain't  holdin'  out  nothin'  on  him  for  the  way  he 
got  them  options.  Maybe  he  did  let  on  he  was  funnin' 
more  than  he  was,  but  they  was  willin'  to  take  the  joke  so 
long  as  they  thought  it  was  on  him,  so  they  ain't  got  no 
kick  comin'  when  it  turns  out  it's  on  theirselves. 

"Of  course,"  -  Mr.  Baff  raised  his  liquor  to  the  level 
of  his  eye  for  the  traditional  tribute  to  its  quality,  and 
having  inducted  more  than  half  of  it  into  his  capacious 
throat,  ritualistically  wiped  his  mustache,  and  con 
cluded,  — -  "of  course,  there's  some  of  'em  kickin',  any 
way,  but  the  valley  don't  allow  they've  any  call  to." 

"I  certainly  agree  with  you,  Mr.  Baff,"  acknowledged 
Rickart's  junior  clerk,  waving  his  own  glass  with  a  ges 
ture  which  he  hoped  would  be  accepted  in  lieu  of  his 
drinking  from  it.  "I  do  think  the  people  who  gave  Mr. 
Elwood  options  on  their  property  have  no  cause  to  com 
plain  of  him." 

"None  whatever,"  -  Mr.  Baff  threw  off  the  remainder 
of  his  liquor  with  a  gesture  of  confirmation  so  large  that 
it  left  the  now  emptied  glass  in  the  best  possible  position 
for  the  bartender  to  refill  it,  which  he  did  without  waiting 
for  the  permission  of  Kenneth's  half-lifted  eyebrow. 

From  under  twin  green  domes  of  cottonwood,  the  bar 
room  of  the  Arroyo  Verde  House  reached  back  into  grate 
ful  dimness,  a  clean,  old,  earth-smelling  room  with  traces 
of  an  earlier  and  magnificent  regime  in  the  tarnished  gilt 
of  the  bar-fittings  and  the  fogged  old  mirrors,  and  a  thin 


342  THE  FORD 

gleam  of  prosperity  along  the  brass  f  ootrail  polished  by  the 
boots  —  or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  exact  to  say  by  the 
boot,  for  the  conventional  negligence  of  attitude  permits 
of  but  one  boot  on  the  rail,  the  other  fitted  comfortably 
into  a  hollow  of  the  much-scrubbed  pine  flooring  —  pol 
ished  by  the  boot  of  such  as  Baff,  the  Scudder  boys,  Wil- 
lard,  Jevens,  and,  on  this  occasion,  the  neat  Oxford  tan 
of  Rickart's  junior  clerk. 

Kenneth  leaned  an  unaccustomed  elbow  on  the  black- 
walnut  bar,  caressing  his  glass  to  conceal  from  the  casual 
comer  how  little  he  had  really  drunk  from  it.  This  was 
the  fifth  day  he  had  ridden  down  from  Agua  Caliente, 
only  to  find  that  neither  his  newly  awakened  social  sym 
pathy  nor  the  late  reduction  of  his  Class  Consciousness 
carried  him  so  far  into  the  confidence  of  Tierra  Longa  as 
the  shared  and  inhibited  weakness  of  Elwood.  In  respect 
to  this  gentleman,  too,  he  found  himself  in  a  quandary, 
not  being  able  either  to  account  for  his  motives  or  his 
whereabouts.  Two  days  before  his  arrival,  Elwood,  fol 
lowing  a  protracted  long-distance  conversation  with  the 
city  office,  had  disappeared  in  the  direction  of  Toyon 
County,  and  though  Kenneth  was  now  openly  committed 
to  Elwood's  policy,  there  was  nothing  Jamieson,  the  Su 
perintendent  at  Agua  Caliente,  could  tell  him;  practically 
nothing.  Jamieson  was  a  stiff  man,  not  letting  himself  be 
liked  much  for  fear  he  would  be  less  respected,  on  whom 
the  knowledge  of  Elwood's  popularity  sat  sourly.  "My 
business  is  the  cattle  business,  Mr.  Brent/'  he  had  ex 
plained  himself;  "and  though  'tis  not  ranked  with  the 
business  of  promo  tin',  there  is  this  to  be  said  of  it,  that 
you  can  succeed  with  cattle  without  playin'  the  fool  to 
them."  So,  for  all  that  Kenneth  could  contribute,  specu- 


THE  FORD  343 

lation  still  hung  on  the  irreducible  item  as  to  what  the 
Old  Man,  who  was  more  or  less  recognized  as  the  source 
of  Elwood's  activities,  might  or  might  not  be  up  to. 

"  It 's  this  away,"  explained  Mr.  Baff.  "  If  so  be  he  was 
expectin'  to  develop  on  his  own  account,  there 's  no  call 
for  him  to  act  like  the  valley  was  ag'in'  him.  One  or  an 
other  of  'em,  they  've  had  their  fill  of  that.  And  likewise, 
if  this  is  a  Government  projeck,  what  call  has  anybody 
to  suppose  that  Tierra  Longa  is  ag'in'  the  Government? 
An'  if  Elwood  is  representin'  the  Irrigation  Bureau,  how 
comes  the  Old  Man  to  be  in  with  him?" 

"What  makes  you  think  this  is  a  Government  pro 
ject?" 

Kenneth  had  asked  this  because  he  really  wished  to 
know.  Even  before  his  arrival  in  the  valley  he  had  heard 
that  a  party  of  Government  surveyors,  who  had  been 
working  on  the  Toy  on  Reserve,  had  moved  down  along  the 
upper  waters  of  the  Arroyo  Verde;  and  they  were  now  at 
Tierra  Rondo.  But  the  moment  he  had  put  the  question, 
in  all  honesty  and  with  no  intention  to  divert  an  equally 
honest  inquiry,  he  was  aware,  on  the  part  of  Jevens,  of 
some  subtle  emanation  as  of  delight  at  mischief  well  exe 
cuted.  It  was  all  part  of  a  disposition  he  had  noted  and 
rejected  during  the  past  five  days,  of  an  attempt  of  the 
liveryman  to  set  up  with  him,  through  the  medium  of  his 
cast  eye,  a  secret  and  sinister  communication.  He  had, 
however,  to  give  his  attention  to  Baff. 

"Well,  if  it  ain't,"  demanded  that  gentleman,  "what  in 
tarnation  is  a  United  States  survey  party  doin'  in  Tierra 
Rondo?" 

"You're  sure  they  are  Government  men?" 

"Why,  ain't  they?"  Baff  was  genuinely  surprised. 


344  THE  FORD 

" They're  the  same  fellers  that  done  the  survey  work  on 
Toyon,  leastways,  Pedro  Gonzales  says  he  can  swear  to 
three  of  'em.  They're  wearin'  the  same  kind  of  clo'zes. 
Lattimer,  their  boss,  he's  a  Gover'ment  man,  everybody 
knows." 

"Lattimer  has  gone  back  to  Washington,"  Willard 
contributed  to  the  general  information.  "I  was  over  to 
Westerville  last  week  and  saw  him  gettin'  on  the  train." 

They  considered  this  rather  baffling  circumstance  in 
silence  for  a  while,  and  Baff  burst  out  at  last:  — 

"Well,  if  they  ain't  Gover'ment  men,  who  in  hell  are 
they?" 

"Oh,"  said  Kenneth,  "that's  what  I  asked  you." 

He  was  really  concerned  to  know.  News  of  this  survey 
ing  party  had  reached  Anne  at  Summerfield  and  he  had 
had  a  letter  from  her  the  night  before  which,  while  it  had 
answered  the  first  part  of  Baff's  demand,  left  him  more 
perplexedly  in  doubt  about  the  latter.  If  such  a  party  was 
at  work  on  a  dam  site  or  reservoir,  it  was  not  likely  his 
appropriation  notice  could  remain  long  undiscovered. 
About  that  same  notice  he  was  beginning  to  be  appre 
hensive;  whether  or  not  it  would  appear  to  the  Old  Man 
in  the  simple  light  it  had  presented  itself  to  Kenneth  and 
to  Anne,  depended  very  much  on  the  way  in  which  he 
came  to  know  of  it.  Kenneth  had  rather  indefinitely  ex 
pected  that,  before  matters  in  the  valley  came  to  a  crisis, 
there  would  be  opportunity  for  a  talk  with  his  employer 
in  which  he  could  have  placed  himself  in  just  the  right 
relation  to  whatever  his  project  might  prove  to  be.  He 
might  have  made  a  clean  breast  of  it  as  soon  as  he  received 
his  commission  to  buy  land  and  water  rights  in  Tierra 
Longa,  but  somehow  it  had  not  seemed  just  the  thing  to 


THE  FORD  345 

communicate  by  letter,  and  in  any  case  he  waited  to  get 
a  fuller  account  of  the  business  from  Elwood.  Just  now, 
as  some  slight  but  subtle  movement  from  Jevens  had  ap 
prised  him  that  the  liveryman  was  probably  acquainted 
with  the  pertinent  item  of  Anne's  letter,  he  had  been 
seized  with  a  moment's  panic  about  the  Old  Man's  pos 
sible  connection  with  the  survey  work  going  on  at  Tierra 
Rondo.  Confronted  with  BafT s  reiterated  question  as  to 
what,  if  anything,  that  connection  might  be,  he  cast 
hastily  about  in  his  mind  for  a  term  that  would  be  within 
the  letter  of  his  instruction  and  yet  not  commit  him  to 
too  much. 

"Not  being  hi  the  Government's  confidence,"  he  threw 
off,  "I  can't  say;  but  as  for  Mr.  Rickart,  I  know  that  he 
would  like  very  much  to  be  with  you  in  this." 

"The  question  being,"  drawled  Lem  Scudder,  "just 
what  this  is  a-goin'  to  be." 

"As  to  that,"  Ken  put  it  candidly,  "I  can't  go  into  de 
tails.  Mr.  Rickart  is  in  Chicago,  but  I  expect  him  within 
a  few  days;  all  I  know  is  that  his  feeling  toward  the  val 
ley  is  most  cordial."  In  his  young  ingenuousness  he  really 
believed  it. 

"Well,  now,  sirs,"  corroborated  Jevens,  "ain't  that 
what  I  always  said?  If  Mr.  Rickart  and  Mr.  Elwood  want 
to  be  with  us,  ain't  that  proof  enough  that  things  is  comin' 
round  our  way?  You  don't  ketch  the  Old  Man  on  the  side 
that 's  gettin'  the  worst  of  it ;  now,  do  you?  "  They  did  not, 
indeed.  Logic  like  this  was  irresistible.  At  least  it  was 
irresistible  to  those  who  had  not  committed  themselves 
in  advance.  To  Willard  it  had  a  certain  dubiousness. 

"If  the  Old  Man  wants  me  with  him,  why  did  n't  he 
say  so  before  he  put  a  paper  on  me?  If  this  is  a  Govern- 


346  THE  FORD 

ment  project,  it's  got  up  for  the  benefit  of  the  taxpayers 
and  there  had  n't  ought  to  be  any  millionaire  staking  out 
the  ground  ahead  of  it.  If  it's  a  private  undertaking, 
there's  no  clause  in  my  option  that  says  where  I'll  be  if 
things  fall  out  for  a  raise.  Any  way  you  take  it,  looks  like 
I'm  out  before  I  know  where  the  ball's  coming  from." 

Jevens  settled  comfortably  back  against  the  black- 
walnut  bar.  "  There  ain't  no  Tierry  Longway  court  goin' 
to  uphold  the  option  that's  ag'in'  a  Tierry  Longway 
man,"  he  opined. 

In  the  face  of  this  cheering  certainty,  Kenneth  knew 
Elwood  or  Rickart  would  have  kept  silent.  If  the  people 
fooled  themselves  it  was  none  of  their  business;  perhaps 
if  just  at  that  moment  he  had  not  caught  again  that 
slight  but  significant  movement  of  Jevens's  wall  eye  — 
as  it  was  he  spoke  out  sharply. 

"Your  option  is  perfectly  regular,  Willard;  the  courts 
would  have  to  uphold  it."  He  modified  his  instinctive 
revolt.  "In  any  large  undertaking  it  is  necessary  to  con 
solidate  the  interests.  Whatever  Mr.  Rickart  wished  to 
do  in  the  valley,  he  would  feel  that  he  had  to  have  some 
thing  he  could  depend  upon."  In  his  young  perturbation 
he  had  let  his  glass  go,  thereby  disclosing,  in  the  full  two 
fingers  of  red  liquor  left  in  it,  the  shallowness  of  his  own 
participation  in  the  fellowship  of  Tierra  Longa.  Recalled 
to  his  obligation  by  the  sight  of  his  untouched  drink, 
Kenneth  hastily  gulped  as  much  as  he  could  manage  at  a 
mouthful,  and  to  cover  the  involuntary  movement  of 
distaste,  he  joined  himself  to  Lem  Scudder  assembling 
his  long  limbs  for  departure. 

Together  they  issued  from  the  shadow  of  the  twin  green 
domes  and  crossed  the  wide  plaza  full  of  light,  emptied 


THE  FORD  347 

of  all  else  but  sleeping  dogs  and  an  occasional  loafer,  chair 
tilted  against  a  shadowed  wall.  At  the  public  hitching- 
rack  where  his  team  was  tied,  Lena  stood  slapping  his  long 
thigh  with  the  hitching-strap,  with  the  air  of  a  man  with 
something  weighty  on  his  mind,  and  not  quite  sure  of  his 
moment. 

"You 're  workin'  f or  Rickart,  ain't  you?"  And  after  a 
longish  interval  he  followed  Kenneth's  slightly  surprised 
affirmative  with  "Elwood  's  workin'  for  him?" 

"He  works  with  him,"  Kenneth  corrected.  "I  mean 
they  often  pull  off  things  together,  but  Etwood's  not  em 
ployed.  He's  working  with  Rickart  on  this,"  he  added 
at  last,  seeing  Lem  got  no  further. 

"Well,  then,  can  you  tell  me  this  much,  are  they 
workin'  for  or  against  Tierry  Longway?" 

Kenneth  considered  this  perplexedly. 

"If  they  were  against,  do  you  suppose  I'd  be  allowed 
to  tell  you?"  he  put  it  at  last.  "Well,  then,  what  good 
would  it  do  for  me  to  tell  you  anything?" 

"I  see."  Lem  balanced  the  strap  carefully  on  his 
hands.  "Well  ...  as  man  to  man,  if  I  was  to  sell  that 
eighty  of  mine  below  the  ditch  for  what  I  can  get  for  it, 
at  the  present  prices,  would  you  say  that  I  was  or  I 
was  n't  goin'  again'  my  best  interests?  Mine  and  Ab's. 
Rememberin'  that  all  we  got's  right  here  in  Tierry  Long- 
way,  an'  Ab's  a  family  man?" 

"Well,  that's  a  hard  proposition  for  me  to  answer, 
Lem." 

"It's  no  harder  than  what  I'm  up  against  myself.  We 
put  all  we  had  an'  two  years'  work  already  into  the  Hill 
side  Ditch,  and  we  ain't  taken  hardly  anything  out  yet. 
Ab's  wife  she's  been  right  sick  this  spring;  her  baby 


348  THE  FORD 

come  too  soon.  ...  I  was  kinda  lottin'  on  gettin'  married 
myself  soon  as  I  could  see  my  way  to  it.  ...  It 's  pretty 
hard  sleddin'  -  -  but  if  things  is  anyways  goin'  ahead  — ?  " 

"I  can't  tell  you,  Lem,  I  —  I  don't  know,  really." 

"If  they  ain't,  you  see,  I  reckon  I'll  have  to  sell  that 
lower  eighty  and  the  water  stock  that  goes  with  it.  I 
allow  the  stockholders  will  take  it  hard  of  me,  sellin'  to 
Rickart.  He  ain't  never  got  in  under  the  Ditch,  an'  they 
allow  he  ain't  never  goin'  to,  but  I  do  need  money  mighty 
bad.  ...  I  reckon  these  development  schemes  is  slow, 
anyhow." 

Kenneth  knew  he  should  have  closed  the  bargain 
at  once;  if  Rickart  wanted  anything  in  the  valley  he 
wanted  the  Hillside  Ditch,  but  neither  Elwood  nor  Rick 
art  had  gone  to  school  with  Lem.  "I  can  tell  you  one 
thing,  Lem,"  he  admitted,  "there's  nothing  in  that  no 
tion  of  a  Government  irrigation  district.  I  knew  they 
had  Tierra  Rondo  on  their  list,  but  the  moment  Anne 
heard  of  these  fellows  surveying,  she  wired  to  the  De 
partment  and  got  a  letter  saying  the  Arroyo  Verde  pro 
ject  has  been  abandoned  on  the  recommendation  of 
Lattimer." 

"The  hell  it  has! "  Then,  withasudden  gleam,  "If  Anne 
had  to  write  to  Washington,  it  can't  be  Rickart  — " 

"Don't  be  too  sure,  Lem."  Kenneth  knew  it  was  a 
popular  conception  in  the  valley  that  Anne  could  get 
what  she  liked  out  of  his  employer.  "The  Old  Man 
never  tells  anybody  everything;  but  I  do  know  that  he 
wants  to  be  friends  with  people  in  the  valley.  You  set 
a  price  on  your  eighty  and  I  can  fix  it  up  for  you." 

Lem  shook  his  head,  thoughtfully. 

"There's  a  nigger  in  the  woodpile,  looks  like.  I  got 


THE  FORD  349 

to  study  over  it.  Folks  on  the  East  Side  won't  anyways 
like  my  sellin'  to  Rickart."  He  climbed  heavily  into  his 
buckboard  and  then  turned  for  a  smile  of  unimpaired 
friendliness.  "So  'long,  old  man  .  .  ."  Kenneth  found 
his  own  shoulders  settling  to  the  depressed  sag  of  the 
other's  as  he  rode  out  toward  Agua  Caliente. 

A  mile  or  two  out  of  town,  where  the  East  Side 
Ditch  was  taken  out  of  the  river,  he  saw  Jim  Hand  look 
ing  for  gopher  holes  in  the  bank  below  the  drop.  As  he 
had  last  seen  Hand  in  Summerfield  he  had  been  a  beaten 
man,  but  in  small,  furtive  ways,  rebellious.  Drink  had 
robbed  him  of  the  sense  of  the  time  that  had  elapsed  be 
tween  the  occasion  of  his  pushing  Cornelius  Burke  into 
the  oil  vat  and  the  death  of  Cornelius  from  some  unex 
plained  cranial  injury;  he  thought  the  two  things  had 
followed  close  on  one  another.  Times  when  he  was 
very  drunk  he  would  boast  of  what  he  had  done  to  Cor 
nelius,  and  finding  himself  disbelieved  would  weep  incon- 
solably.  Kenneth  was  always  uneasy  lest  somehow  his 
own  surreptitious  knowledge  of  the  incident  should  come 
to  light,  and  he  should  be  called  upon  to  confirm  the  pup 
pet  of  the  gods  in  his  one  successful  reprisal.  As  soon 
as  he  caught  sight  of  Hand  now,  blundering  about  the 
banks,  Kenneth  dropped  his  head  and  looked  attentively 
between  his  horse's  ears;  but  Jim  must  have  been  looking 
out  for  him,  for  the  next  moment  he  disappeared  from  the 
canal  and  presently  broke  with  a  cautious  rustle  from  the 
willows  which  here  approached  almost  to  the  county  road. 
He  called  to  Brent  in  his  cracked,  bibulous  voice,  and 
made  mysterious  signals  for  him  to  come  alongside. 

"  Wanna  tell  you  sumpin  .  .  .  wanna  tell  you  .  .  ." 
Kenneth  allowed  his  horse  to  drift  into  the  tall  grass  and 


350  THE  FORD 

humored  Hand's  portentous  demand  for  secrecy  by  pre 
tending  to  cut  a  riding-switch  from  the  willows.  "  Wanna 
tell  Steve  Brent's  boy  .  .  .  fine  boy  .  .  .  fine  father  .  .  . 
partner  o'  mine.  .  .  .  Tell  you  sumpin  you  don'  know 

'bout  that "  He  lost  himself  in  obscene  profanity 

which  prefaced  the  introduction  of  Rickart's  name.  It  is 
probable  that  Hand  knew  of  Kenneth's  employment  by 
Rickart,  but  when  in  liquor  the  tendency  of  his  mind  was 
always  to  telescope  the  present  into  the  situation  at 
Petrolia. 

"What  was  it  you  wanted  to  tell  me,  Jim?"  Kenneth 
recalled  him. 

Hand  made  the  solemn  and  pitiful  struggle  of  the  drunk 
ard  for  the  recovery  of  his  own  members,  peering  a  little 
for  the  malign  Powers  who  might  at  any  moment  reduce 
him  again  to  subjection. 

"Say,  you  know  that  Elwood?  Damn  city  feller  .  .  . 
damn  cap'list,  been  buyin'  ranches,  buyin'  ever'body's 
ranches.  Workin'  for  Rickart,  he  is.  Workin'  for 
Rickart.  Thass  what  I  tole  'em  .  .  .  tole  ever'body.  .  .  . 
Damn  teetotaler  workin'  for  Rickart." 

" Elwood 's  working  for  Rickart;  I  get  that.   What  of 
it?" 
.    Jim  gazed  at  him  with  fixed  solemnity. 

"Steve  Brent's  boy  ..."  he  affirmed.  "All  right, 
feller.  Never  go  back  on  Tierry  Longway  ...  I  tell  you." 
He  rocked  a  little  and  brought  up  with  a  hiccough  which 
seemed  for  the  moment  to  carry  off  the  confusion  of 
drink;  he  came  nearer  and  laid  a  cautioning  hand  on 
Kenneth's  rein. 

"You  know  them  Gover'ment  men  up  in  Tierry 
Rondo?"  He  waved  his  arms  and  took  a  squint  through 


THE  FORD  351 

his  hands  in  a  rough  indication  of  surveying.  "Well, 
they  ain't  workin'  for  the  Government." 

"Oh,"  said  Kenneth,  "they're  Government  men  and 
they  are  n't  working  for  the  Government!" 

Hand  leered  up  at  him;  for  once  he  had  done  mischief 
undetected  by  the  Powers. 

"I'll  show  you."  He  produced,  after  some  fumbling,  a 
crumpled  paper.  "I's  fishin'  th'  other  day,  feller  came 
along  —  Gover'ment  man,  same  feller  on  Toyon  'zerve, 
gimme  this;  wanted  cash,  —  gimme  this."  He  waved  the 
check  about  for  Brent  to  see  that  it  was  for  a  trifling 
amount,  but  drawn  on  a  bank  that  the  Old  Man  used 
for  enterprises  he  did  not  openly  father,  and  signed  by 
Elwood. 

"You  say  this  was  a  Government  man;  how  do  you 
know?" 

"Same  feller  over  on  Toyon  'zerve  last  winter;  knew  ol' 
Jim.  Did  n'  wanna  cash  check  in  Tierry  Longway,  made 
ol'  Jim  promise."  He  poked  it  insinuatingly  at  Brent, 
"You  cash  it  ...  ol'  Jim  needs  money  .  .  .  father's  part 
ner  .  .  .  ought  to  be  rich  .  .  .  am  rich  .  .  .  damn  Cap'list." 
He  trailed  off  in  cursings  of  Rickart  and  his  son-in-law. 

Wishing  nothing  so  much  as  to  be  rid  of  him,  Kenneth 
cashed  the  check;  he  thought  he  would  show  it  to  Anne. 
He  recalled  Anne's  first  impression  of  Elwood  as  sinister 
.  .  .  Anne's  first  impressions  held.  Circumstance  and  her 
friends  sometimes  jockeyed  her  out  of  them  for  a  time, 
but  in  the  end  one  had  to  acknowledge  their  truth. 
Anne  had  said  that  Elwood  meant  no  good  to  Tierra 
Longa,  and  Elwood  was  paying  the  surveyors  at  work  in 
the  round  valley  above  the  Gate.  He  thought  he  would 
go  up  and  have  a  look  at  them  the  next  day. 


352  THE  FORD 

Accordingly  he  rode  to  Palomitas  the  first  thing  in  the 
morning,  knowing  that  his  sister  was  expected  some  time 
toward  the  end  of  the  week;  but  this  time  she  had  sent 
Ellis  Trudeau  in  her  stead.  Kenneth  found  her  with  his 
father  deep  in  the  entertainment  of  a  new  card-filing 
device  for  the  ranch  accounts;  so  many  lambs  dropped, 
so  many  days  between  planting  and  harvest,  the  rise  and 
fall  of  waters,  kept  like  a  court  lady's  diary.  It  occurred 
to  Kenneth  that  it  would  give  a  new  validity  to  his  ex 
cuse,  being  caught  by  Elwood's  men  at  the  Gate,  if  he 
took  Ellis  with  him;  it  is  always  excusable  for  a  young 
man  to  be  wandering  by  river-banks  with  a  charming 
young  lady. 

" Certainly,  my  dear,  you  must  go,"  urged  Steven 
Brent;  "it  is  part  of  your  job  to  know  the  land.  We'll 
see  when  you  return  how  much  you  can  tell  me." 

"My  land!"  said  Addie  when  instructions  about  the 
lunch  she  was  to  put  up  reached  her;  "get  away  before 
Luella  M'ree  sees  you;  she'll  howl  the  roof  off." 

The  girl's  soft  eyes  sought  Kenneth's  with  lively  inter 
rogation.  "It'll  seem  ever  so  much  more  like  a  picnic 
with  children,"  she  suggested. 

Kenneth  laughed  and  agreed;  he  was  the  adored  of 
Luella  M'ree  and  was  immensely  tickled  by  it. 

As  they  went  out,  the  three  of  them,  by  the  Agua  Cali- 
ente  gate,  the  morning-warmed  air  of  the  mesa  began  to 
move  before  the  cooler  currents  from  the  Torr' ;  it  stroked 
the  cheek  like  soft  fingers.  In  the  clear  sky  above  the 
valley  buzzards  wheeled  and  tilted.  Outside  the  gate  they 
did  not  at  once  recapture  the  fairy  wonder  into  which 
more  than  a  month  before  they  had  delightfully  stum 
bled;  they  noted  where  the  filaree  had  curled,  and  stooped 


THE  FORD  353 

to  tie  the  bunch  grass  to  a  shelter  for  a  lark  which  had 
miscalculated  its  shadow  for  her  nest.  They  rode  into 
the  widening  day  and  felt  their  private  anxieties  shrink 
with  their  shadows.  As  the  trail  slanted  down  the  lower 
mesa  to  strike  into  the  river  above  the  Agua  Caliente 
bridge,  they  saw  two  little  Romeros  digging  their  bare 
heels  into  the  flanks  of  their  buckskin  pony  and  affecting 
a  profound  obliviousness  to  the  presence  of  the  pic 
nickers. 

' '  They  're  tagging ;  the  little  rascals ! "  Kenneth  laughed ; 
"  shall  I  send  them  back?  " 

"Oh,  there's  lunch  enough,"  Ellis  consented;  "I've 
great  sympathy  for  taggers;  I've  tagged  all  my  life 
disgracefully." 

Kenneth  raised  a  shout  which  admitted  the  little  copies 
of  Ignacio  and  Pedro  Demetrio  to  their  hereditary  priv 
ilege. 

From  the  mesa  Arroyo  Verde  presented  itself  to  the 
eye  as  a  winding  inset  of  wild  vines  and  willows;  the  trail 
that  broke  over  its  shallow  canon  dropped  then  out  of 
sight  in  a  river  of  green  that  flowed  and  glinted  in  the  wind 
like  living  waters,  but  the  stream  itself  spread  thinly  over 
clean  sand,  or  collected  in  trout-abounding  pools  about 
the  roots  of  ancient  sycamores.  Spits  of  dry  rubble  and 
banks  of  fern  and  spiked  monkshood  divided  the  chan 
nels;  blue  herons  nested  there;  by  night  raccoons  could  be 
heard  bubbling  under  the  tented  vines.  By  the  time  the 
picnic  party  reached  the  bottom  of  the  canon,  the  high 
sun  on  tender  foliage  filled  it  with  translucent  shadow; 
fleeces  of  willows  edged  the  runnels,  or  floated  in  the 
golden  air. 

Kenneth  and  Ellis  fished  up  the  river  from  channel 


354  THE  FORD 

to  channel  thridded  with  still  pools;  the  children  were 
left  to  bring  up  the  horses  slowly,  wading  and  splashing 
to  their  hearts'  content.  After  an  hour  or  two  of  this, 
Kenneth  made  a  singular  and  interesting  discovery;  it 
was,  that  after  long  looking  at  brown  streams  through 
golden  air  and  mellow  light,  it  is  possible  to  slip  deep  into 
the  pale  golden-brown  of  a  girl's  eyes  as  naturally  as  the 
sun-warmed  water  slips  from  pool  to  pool.  You  work  up 
a  still,  golden  shallow,  with  the  dun  note  of  wood  pigeons 
overhead  and  an  occasional  echo  of  the  children's  laughter 
far  behind  you,  and  then,  across  some  trout-ringed,  glid 
ing  reach,  your  spirit  dips  into  condoning  quiet,  —  no 
troubling  spark,  you  understand,  —  no  sort  of  nonsense 
about  it,  —  just  a  comfortable  word  or  two  about  how  the 
sport  was  going  and  the  proper  fly  to  use,  and  that  still 
flowing  of  glance  into  glance  .  .  .  and  the  faint,  far-off 
reassurance  of  young  laughter. 

All  this  was  the  more  remarkable  for  the  ease  with 
which,  about  a  mile  below  the  Gate,  a  passage  was 
effected  from  the  point  of  meeting  eyes  to  the  business  of 
cooking  trout  between  two  stones,  and  the  final  considera 
tion  as  to  whether  Pedro  Demetrio  ought  really  to  be 
allowed  that  last  piece  of  pie  just  because  he  seemed  able 
to  hold  it.  Exactly  as  Ellis  had  said,  the  presence  of  chil 
dren  made  the  occasion  much  more  like  a  picnic;  as  they 
lay  stuffed  to  repletion  on  the  sand  with  their  toes  in  the 
warm  shallows,  comfort  stole  upon  him,  beatitude  of  the 
Distributor  of  Benefits.  Ellis,  who  had  wandered  away 
out  of  sight  for  a  drowsing  interval,  came  back  with  her 
hands  spattered  with  pollen  of  pine  which  she  had  culled 
from  the  ripple  edges. 

"Your  father  was  right,"  she  concluded,  reading  the 


THE  FORD  355 

signs  as  he  had  taught  her.    "It  is  going  to  be  a  good 


season." 


"Anne  was  right,"  he  affirmed,  "when  she  chose  you 
for  assistant."  Think  of  her  picking  up  things  as  quickly 
as  that! 

"Oh,  Anne's  nearly  always  right,"  —  she  blew  the 
dried  pollen  from  her  palms,  —  "always  when  it's  peo 
ple." 

"In  an  hour,"  he  said,  "we'll  know  how  right  she  was 
about  Elwood." 

By  this  time  Ellis  knew  everything  the  Brents  knew 
and  all  they  surmised  about  Tierra  Longa.  But  it  was 
nearer  two  hours  than  one  when  he  came  back  from  the 
Gate  with  confirmation. 

"He's  there  all  right?" 

"Elwood?" 

Kenneth  nodded.  "There 's  a  surveying  party,  running 
levels  in  Tierra  Rondo.  Elwood 's  in  charge.  They've 
found  my  appropriation  notice.  While  I  was  looking  .  .  ." 
They  spoke  in  the  hushed  tone  of  conspiracy.  She  had 
been  alone  with  the  felt  presence  of  the  wood  and  the 
river,  and  their  spell  was  on  her.  Kenneth  said  he  thought 
the  discovery  had  been  considerable  of  a  jog  to  Elwood. 
He  had  n't  known  what  to  make  of  it.  He  could  see  him 
trying,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  to  make  something 
of  it  that  would  prevent  the  men  from  supposing  that 
Rickart  had  slipped  something  over  on  him.  Well,  any 
way,  it  settled  one  thing. 

"  Yes  ?"  she  interrogated. 

"That  whatever  they're  up  to  they  are  deliberately 
trying  to  keep  me  from  finding  it  out,  and  at  the  same 
time  they're  using  me."  He  scuffed  the  sand  in  per- 


356  THE  FORD 

plexity.  "I  don't  believe  Elwood  has  been  to  Toyon,"  he 

thought  out  finally.  "He's  been  right  here  all  the  time, 

trying  to  avoid  meeting  me." 
"Well,"  she  said  at  last,  "Anne  was  right,  then." 
"Right?  Oh,  yes  ...  if  they  don't  want  me  to  know,  it 

can  only  be  because  what  they're  up  to  is  no  good  to 

Tierra  Longa." 


XIII 

IT  was  Ellis  saw  it  first  as,  with  the  shadows  beginning  to 
fleet  before  the  coastwise  hills,  they  climbed  up  out  of 
the  Arroyo  —  the  cloud  of  dust  far  down  the  valley,  and 
the  black,  scurrying  insect  that  from  time  to  time,  as  the 
wind  shifted  the  cloud,  outran  it. 

"It's  a  car/'  Kenneth  agreed;  and  then,  desire  and 
apprehension  leaping  together  in  his  mind,  "Rickart's 
car?" 

It  might  have  been;  there  was  a  passable  road  from  San 
Francisco  which  the  great  roadster  could  have  covered 
in  six  or  seven  hours.  Now,  they  concluded,  things  will 
begin  to  happen.  But  as  they  watched  it,  riding  in  to  the 
ranch  house,  the  car  displayed  unfamiliar  lines  and  a  rate 
of  going  that  spoke  more  of  the  driver's  concern  for  his 
machine  than  of  Rickart's  obsession  for  annihilating  the 
distance  between  places.  Decidedly  not  Rickart's  car, 
they  agreed;  and  as  it  came  charging  on  toward  Palo- 
mitas  instead  of  turning  off  across  the  Agua  Caliente 
bridge,  it  was  Ellis  again  who  recognized  the  machine  in 
which  Anne  from  time  to  time  went  careening  among  the 
orchard  estates  of  Summerfield.  "It  is  Anne,"  she  de 
cided  finally. 

They  worked  out,  to  account  for  her  coming  from  the 
direction  of  Arroyo  Verde  instead  of  up  from  the  Draw, 
that  Anne  must  have  telephoned  to  headquarters  and 
been  told  that  that  was  where  she  would  find  Kenneth. 

"If  she  had  anything  to  say  important  enough  to  bring 
her  all  the  way  out  here  in  a  hired  car,"  Ellis  insisted, 


358  THE  FORD 

"she  could  n't  want  to  lose  any  time  over  it."  With  so 
much  in  the  air  it  was  possible  that  something  might  have 
happened  to  commit  Anne  to  just  that  extravagance. 
Kenneth  no  longer  doubted  that  this  was  his  sister. 

"But  who's  that  with  her?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Ellis  hesitated.  But  she  did  know,  and 
Kenneth  perceived  it  in  almost  the  same  moment  that 
he  recognized  the  second  veiled  figure  as  Virginia.  The 
riders  had  hardly  more  than  dismounted  at  the  house  gate 
when  the  car  overtook  them. 

Anne,  with  a  single  motion,  alighted  from  it  and 
claimed  her  brother's  attention.  "They  told  me  at  the 
ranch  that  you  were  in  town.  ...  I  went  straight  on  from 
the  Draw.  Read  that."  She  thrust  a  folded  San  Francisco 
paper  at  him. 

"Good  —  God!  Anne  —  it's  not  possible.  ...  I'll  not 
believe  it  .  .  ." 

"You'll  have  to.  Mike  Williams  did  it;  I  had  a  line 
from  him  this  morning.  .  .  .  You  know  Mike  ..." 

Instinctively  the  brother  and  sister  walked  apart. 
Without  a  word  Ellis  took  the  bridles  over  her  arm  and 
moved  off  with  the  horses  toward  the  corral;  Virginia  sat 
still  in  the  tonneau. 

When  Ellis  Trudeau  first  took  charge  of  Anne  Brent's 
office  at  Summerfield,  she  found,  among  other  accumula 
tions,  two  or  three  months'  back  numbers  of  real-estate 
and  farming  journals  which  Anne,  in  the  complication  of 
her  interest  with  Palomitas,  had  been  obliged  to  leave  un 
read.  "Save  anything  that  has  to  do  with  local  interests, 
and  everything  in  connection  with  irrigation  projects, 
and  mark  it  for  me  to  read,"  she  had  instructed,  and  Ellis 
had  faithfully  saved  for  her  the  report  of  a  paper  by  the 


THE  FORD  359 

Government  irrigation  expert,  Lattimer,  on  San  Fran 
cisco's  water  supply,  read  at  a  recent  convention. 

Ellis's  attention  had  been  stayed  by  the  mention  of 
the  expert's  name,  for  she  had  already  heard  how  Tierra 
Rondo  had  been  placed  on  the  list  of  possible  Government 
projects  for  investigation.  It  happened  to  be  this  report 
that  claimed  Anne's  freshest  attention,  and  something  in 
the  wording  of  a  paragraph,  which  stated  that  there  was 
a  plan  on  foot  among  public-spirited  business  men  for  a 
supply  from  some  unconsidered  source,  held  her  a  long 
while  in  silent  speculation. 

She  could  never  really  say  whether  or  not  her  conscious 
intelligence  took  hold  of  the  possibility  that  this  slightly 
indicated  source  might  be  the  waters  of  the  Arroyo  Verde, 
but,  obeying  some  obscure  impulse,  Anne  had  blue-pen 
ciled  the  paragraph  and  sent  it  with  a  note  of  interroga 
tion  to  a  man  she  knew  on  one  of  the  city  papers.  He  had 
been  for  a  time  in  charge  of  one  of  the  local  news-sheets, 
and  had  found  in  Miss  Brent's  keen  intelligence  the  one 
substitute  for  the  stir  and  tension  which  is  one  of  the  per 
quisites  of  the  journalistic  calling.  Young  Williams  knew 
enough  to  know  that  if  Anne  sent  him  an  item  like  that,  it 
was  because  she  had  more  reason  for  finding  it  pertinent 
than  appeared  on  the  surface;  he  had  made  it,  therefore, 
the  subject  of  a  personal  investigation,  which  had  re 
sulted  in  the  two-column  announcement  of  a  plan  by  which 
the  waters  of  Tierra  Longa  were  to  be  brought  through 
a  cement  conduit  across  the  valley  and  tunneled,  through 
a  flanking  coast  range,  to  the  city  faucets. 

The  name  of  T.  Rickart  did  not  directly  appear,  though 
there  was  mention  of  his  large  holdings  in  that  district, 
and  a  great  deal  more  about  the  public  spirit  and  pro- 


360  THE  FORD 

phetic  genius  of  Elwood.  Very  little  of  the  detail,  of  which 
there  was  a  surprising  amount,  got  home  to  Kenneth  at 
the  first  reading. 

"But  you  can  see,"  said  Anne,  "how  it  explains  every 
thing." 

"It  explains  why  I  was  n't  told  .  .  .  why  I  was  sent 
here,  not  knowing,  to  win  the  confidence  of  the  people  — " 
A  wave  of  sick  indignation  went  over  him,  recalling  the 
Old  Man's  calculated  glance  of  quiet  confidence,  his  "I  've 
always  thought  that  scheme  of  your  father's  perfectly 
feasible  .  .  ." 

Anne  caught  the  passing  thought  that  whitened  her 
brother's  countenance. 

"We've  got  to  tell  father! "  They  were  moving  off  to 
gether. 

"Ken,  oh,  Ken!"  Virginia  was  getting  out  of  the  ton- 
neau  and  calling  them. 

Kenneth's  shoulders  hitched  with  impatience.  "Ah! 
—  why  did  you  bring  her?" 

"I  did  n't.  She  just  came." 

Mechanically  they  waited,  remembering  their  man 
ners.  Virginia  came  between  them  and  caught  them  each 
by  an  elbow. 

"Oh,  I  know  just  how  you  feel!  This  dreadful  Capi 
talistic  System — " 

"Ah  — ah!" 

"Oh,  I  know  how  you  feel  .  .  ."  Mercifully  they  lost  her 
as  they  entered  the  house  to  look  for  Steven  Brent,  walk 
ing  at  sunset  in  his  wife's  garden.  He  took  it  very  quietly, 
with  the  look  of  a  man  who  sees  his  beloved  hurt  and  may 
not  help  her.  He  handed  the  paper  back  after  a  cursory 
reading. 


THE  FORD  361 

"If  Rickart  says  he'll  take  the  water  away  from  Tierra 
Longa,  he'll  do  it." 

"He  has  n't,"  said  Anne;  "he  has  n't  even  said.  It  was 
I  who  got  it  into  the  paper."  She  explained  briefly.  "I 
don't  believe  he  was  expecting  to  have  it  found  out  so 


soon." 


"He  was  n't,"  agreed  Rickart's  clerk;  "there  was  a  lot 
more  he  wanted.  What  it  tells  here  is  what  he  meant  to 
do."  Item  by  item  he  mentioned  rights  and  properties 
accredited  to  the  promoters  of  the  scheme,  which  the 
Brents  knew  were  all  in  the  hands  of  original  owners. 

"But  if  it 's  like  that,  if  he  has  n't  everything  in  his  own 
hands,  yet,  isn't  there  something — ?"  Steven  Brent 
looked  from  one  to  the  other  of  his  children  and  with  a 
sigh  turned  his  eyes  toward  the  breach  in  the  encircling 
ranges  by  which  the  threatened  waters  reached  seaward. 
Below  them  they  saw  the  wind  on  their  own  olive  trees, 
the  river's  winding  green,  the  fan-shaped  shafts  of  light 
that  played  through  the  coast  hill  canons,  and  the  land  - 
the  land  that  was  so  much  a  part  of  their  every  thought, 
that  bound  them  to  it  through  the  nurture  of  common 
experience  - 

"Over  there,"  said  Steven  Brent,  "from  the  top  of  San 
Anselmo,  the  Spanish  padres  blessed  it  ...  where  the 
town  stands  there  was  a  roadhouse  when  Fremont  forded 
the  river.  Fifty  years  ago,  when  my  father  drove  over  the 
Pass,  there  was  this  house  here  and  the  hacienda  at  Agua 
Caliente.  .  .  .  Even  in  those  days  they  dreamed  of  a  dam 
at  Indian  Gate."  . . .  And  again,  "Water,"  he  said,  "water 
and  power  .  .  .  and  farms  .  .  .  farms,  not  cities.  ..."  He 
fell  silent,  his  thin  hand  plucking  at  his  beard. 

"Farms,"  said  Anne;  "farms  and  people  .  .  .  people. 


362  THE  FORD 

And  to  think  that  there 's  nothing  we  can  do  about  it! 
Nothing!" 

"  Nothing?" 

"The  people  of  the  valley,  yes,  .  .  .  perhaps,  if  they 
could  get  together.  But  who's  to  lead  them?  There's 
nothing  we  can  do  ...  how  could  we  ?  Ken  working  for 
Rickart  and  I  —  when  I  think  of  the  terms  on  which  he 
let  me  have  that  mortgage  .  .  ."  Whether  for  or  against, 
how  trapped  they  were  and  impotent ! 

Brent  took  the  paper  again.  "It  says  here  that  the 
surplus  waters  alone.  .  .  .  But  I  thought  you  had  the 
surplus,  son?  Does  n't  that  put  you  in  .  .  .?" 

Brother  and  sister  exchanged  one  swift,  veiled  inter 
rogation. 

"Oh,  there's  no  doubt  about  it,"  Kenneth  agreed; 
"I'm  in  on  this  scheme  to  take  the  water  away  from 
Tierra  Longa,  —  I'm  in." 

And  Anne,  the  undaunted,  broke  into  sobbing,  hysteri 
cal  laughter. 

Ellis  Trudeau  came  out  of  the  house  and  stood  behind 
Anne's  chair,  unobtrusive,  serviceable.  She  took  off 
Anne's  hat  and  dusty  veil  and  pinned  up  the  masses  of  her 
hair.  "The  chauffeur  says  he  must  be  starting  back  in  an 
hour.  I  think  I  had  better  go  with  him." 

"Ah,  do,"  Anne  urged  with  relief;  "I  think  I  must  stay 
here." 

Anne's  assistant  nodded. 

"Addie's  giving  the  man  some  supper;  we'd  better 
have  ours." 

They  came  into  a  more  natural  relation  to  the  situation 
during  the  meal.  Mr.  Brent  had  to  read  the  paper  aloud 
for  the  benefit  of  Addie  and  Peters. 


THE  FORD  363 

"My  land!"  said  Addie;  " there 's  folks  in  the  valley 
that  fit  for  their  places  once,  and  I  reckon  they  ain't  so 
tuckered  out  but  what  they  can  do  it  again." 

"  But  what  can  they  do?  "  Virginia  demanded  at  large; 
"I've  always  said  there  ought  to  be  a  farmers'  union. 
They  are  as  much  the  victims  of  the  Capitalistic  System 
as  anybody;  they've  just  got  to  organize  against  it." 

"Why  against?"   said  Steven  Brent.    "Doesn't  the 
land  need  Rickart  as  much  as  it  needs  the  rest  of  us? 
All  this  struggle  —  all  this  plotting  and  contriving  - 
He  mused  in  his  beard.  "What  the  land  needs  is  that  we 
should  cherish  and  work  it.  .  .  . " 

"'T  ain't  Christian,  that's  what  it  ain't,"  Addie  ram 
paged.  "It  ain't  any  ways  Christian,  if  you  ask  me.  I 
allow  it's  called  that,  but  callin'  don't  make  it  so,  long  as 
things  like  this  're  goin'  on.  Ain't  it  hi  the  Bible  that 
we're  all  children  of  one  Father?  Ain't  it  in  the  law  that 
the  children  share  an'  share  alike?  The  earth  and  the 
sea  an'  all  that  in  them  is !  Ain't  them  the  water  an'  the 
oil  an'  things?  It  don't  stand  to  reason  Them  that's 
Above  would  be  so  set  on  havin'  01'  Man  Rickart  for  a 
fav'rite  child.  Howcome  we  got  the  laws  fixed  so's  he 
can  just  natur'ly  snatch  the  innards  out  of  everything, 
an'  leave  the  husks  an'  the  peelin's  for  us?"  she  de 
manded. 

Virginia  was  of  the  opinion  that  what  the  farmers 
needed  was  Class  Consciousness.  "They  must  develop 
their  Class  Consciousness,"  she  insisted. 

Nobody  said  anything.  After  a  longish  interval  Steven 
Brent  addressed  himself  to  Ellis. 

"Well,  my  dear— " 

"I  was  thinking  of  the  herons,"  she  said;  "we  saw 


364  .THE  FORD 

them  coming  home  to-night,  long  flights  of  them.  I  was 
thinking  how  many  hundred  years  they  Ve  nested  there, 
and  one  day  they  will  come  and  there  11  be  only  a  cement 
aqueduct  .  .  ." 

Almost  by  concerted  movement  the  three  Brents 
pushed  back  their  chairs;  they  went  out  of  the  low  room 
by  different  doors.  Somehow  the  homely  touch  had 
brought  the  relieving  rush  of  tears. 

Almost  immediately  Kenneth  left  for  Agua  Caliente; 
he  had  reflected  that  he  ought  not  to  remain  so  far  from 
the  telephone;  the  premature  publications  of  his  plans 
might  bring  new  orders  from  Rickart's  office.  Anne 
walked  out  to  the  corral  with  him  while  he  saddled,  but 
there  was  little  to  be  said. 

"  I  must  see  Rickart  first,"  he  told  her. 

Virginia  joined  them.  "I  know  how  you  must  be  feel 
ing,"  she  comforted;  "it's  another  victory  for  Capital 
ism,  but  every  victory  brings  them  nearer  the  end.  It 
teaches  the  people  to  see  how  they  must  unite  against  a 
system  that  makes  such  things  possible.  I  know  how 
you  .  .  . " 

Kenneth  gloomed  at  her  as  he  gathered  up  his  reins. 
"Sometimes,  Virginia,"  he  told  her  with  brutal  convic 
tion,  "I  think  you  don't  know  am/thing."  Good  Heavens! 
he  thought,  as  he  rode,  could  n't  the  woman  understand 
that  this  was  n't  a  social  problem;  this  was  Frank's 
father  and  Tierra  Longa. 

Instinctively  Kenneth  was  prepared  to  find  Elwood  at 
Agua  Caliente.  By  what  means  he  had  already  been  noti 
fied  of  the  premature  announcement  of  his  plans  it  was 
impossible  to  guess,  —  he  would  naturally  have  been,  all 
this  time,  in  close  touch  with  the  city  office,  —  but  it  was 


THE  FORD  365 

plain  that  it  had  been  a  jolt  to  him.  It  had  jolted  him 
clear  out  of  that  seat  on  the  water  wagon  from  which  he 
had  so  successfully  appealed  to  Tierra  Longa.  In  the 
four  or  five  hours  since  Kenneth  had  discovered  him  at 
Indian  Gate,  Elwood  had  sopped  his  temperamental  need 
to  feel  always  the  perfect  rapport  for  his  objective,  with 
as  many  drinks  as  served  to  dissolve  the  figure  of  himself, 
as  he  must  now  seem  to  the  cheated  ranchers,  in  the  rich 
picture  of  San  Francisco's  most  public-spirited  citizen  - 
last  most  serviceable  resort  of  the  romantic  imagination 
—  paying  his  devoir  to  his  city. 

For  Elwood,  by  the  time  the  junior  clerk  joined  him 
in  the  long  gallery  of  the  old  hacienda,  the  waters  of 
Arroyo  Verde  were  already  pouring  through  the  city 
mains,  a  libation  to  that  peculiar  cult  of  the  West,  the 
pride  of  Locality.  Hymning  his  Queen  of  the  Golden 
Gate,  he  exalted  his  own  services.  He,  Elwood,  had  done 
this  thing.  He  had  looted  the  wilderness;  he  had  led  a 
river  captive. 

It  was  a  tremendous  thing  to  have  done,  a  man's-size 
thing.  The  sort  of  thing  a  Man's  Own  Town  expected  of 
him,  as  a  witness  to  its  superiority  over  all  other  towns. 

There  was  more  of  this  and  all  in  the  same  epic  strain. 
Kenneth  endured  it.  Jamieson  pulled  intermittently  at 
his  pipe. 

Nearby  the  wind  fretted  the  broad  leaves  of  the  figs, 
where  it  ceased  they  heard  the  steady  purling  of  the 
creek.  Finally,  as  a  sense  of  their  unresponsiveness  began 
to  make  itself  felt  through  the  Dionysian  raptures  of  the 
successful  "boqster,"  Elwood  consented  to  take  them 
into  the  conversation.  He  was  driven  to  take  them  in  by 
his  need  of  rapprochement  with  his  audience.  He  betrayed 


366  THE  FORD 

the  discomfiture  he  had  suffered,  on  the  publication  of  his 
project  with  so  many  items  of  it  unaccomplished,  in  the 
lengths  to  which  he  went  to  prove  that  the  announcement 
must  have  been  sanctioned  by  Rickart.  How  could  in 
formation,  which  might  render  prohibitive  a  scheme  the 
public  utility  of  which  even  the  press  admitted,  get  past 
two  such  men  as  himself  and  his  working  partner?  He 
said  that  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  he  might  easily  have 
blundered;  to  give  the  thing  away  prematurely  was  just 
the  sort  of  blunder  that  he,  with  his  willingness  to  credit 
everybody  with  his  own  devotion  to  the  Good  of  the 
Town,  might  have  made.  But  of  Rickart,  or  of  a  man 
transmuted  by  such  a  partnership,  it  simply  was  n't 
thinkable. 

Oh,  was  n't  it?  Kenneth  wanted  to  know. 

Well,  now,  was  it?  Was  n't  the  fact  that  Rickart  had 
got  publicity  for  his  plans,  proof  that  he  wanted  it?  Not 
that  a  pocket-souled,  sensation-mongering  press  would  n't 
have  published  anything  with  the  Old  Man's  name  to  it; 
but  had  anybody  ever  known  him  to  give  out  information 
except  as  it  was  to  his  advantage?  In  this  case  informa 
tion  was  too  detailed  not  to  have  been  authorized.  And, 
anyway,  look  at  the  long  time  the  work  had  gone  on  under 
cover  of  their  joint  astuteness. 

He  said  that  it  had  been  his  own  scheme  originally. 
He  had  conceived  it  on  the  earliest  of  those  retreats  to 
Tierra  Longa  made  necessary  by  his  own  neglect  of  the 
element  in  question  as  a  beverage.  He  had  climbed  up 
Indian  Gate  and  from  thence  [tie  had  had  a  vision;  a 
vision  of  the  river  dammed  and  stored,  not  to  unend 
ing  fruitfulness,  as  Steven  Brent  had  seen  it,  but  of  an 
arched,  concreted  aqueduct  leading  from  the  Gate  to  the 


THE  FORD  367 

city's  faucets;  a  vision  worthy  of  the  most  exalted  cult 
of  Locality  .jit  was  a  vision,  moreover,  which  had  come 
triumphantly  through  the  Old  Man's  searching  test  as 
to  what  there  was  in  it.  It  had  proved  itself,  in  fine,  a 
Business  Proposition.  Then  there  had  been  the  Interests.  J 

Elwood  admitted  that  there  were  interests  in  San 
Francisco  which  did  not  absolutely  demand  the  waters 
of  Tierra  Longa  for  their  fulfillment;  interests  whose 
vision  was  speckled  with  considerations  of  immediate  and 
personal  profit.  And  there  was  the  game  of  city  politics; 
pieces  to  be  placed  on  the  board  where  they  might  easily 
be  brought  up  to  flank  and  cover  the  final,  crowning 
moves.  They  had  had  to  have  help  there.  But  it  was 
none  of  those  who  had  been  so  included  in  their  confi 
dences  who  had  betrayed  it  to  the  newspapers.  No;  that 
would  n't  have  been  their  way  of  spilling  the  beans. 
They  would  have  cut  in  and  blocked  the  whole  scheme  by 
buying  land  and  water  at  points  of  vantage.  For  proof  of 
their  loyalty,  look  at  the  free  hand  they  had  given  Elwood 
in  the  valley.  For  they  had  all  recognized  that  the  tick 
lish  point  had  been  the  possession  of  lands  with  water 
rights  in  Tierra  Longa.  Actually,  he  said,  a  tentative 
survey  of  the  line-  of  the  aqueduct  had  been  made  and 
rights  of  way  secured  before  any  attack  had  been  made 
on  the  local  problem. 

And  then,  when  everything  had  been  done  to  commit 
them  to  work,  and  yet  nothing  which  insured  its  accom 
plishment,  there  had  come  this  staggering  news  that  the 
Arroyo  Verde  District  had  been  reserved  for  investigation 
by  the  Bureau  of  Irrigation.  Here  again  it  was  Elwood 
who,  by  his  extraordinary  faculty  for  organizing  the 
weakness  of  men,  had  found  a  way  to  divert,  not  only  the 


368  THE  FORD 

investigation,  but  all  its  labors  in  his  direction.  Not  that 
he  put  it  in  the  terms  of  weakness.  His  narrative  was 
lit  up  as  by  a  phosphorescence  of  decay,  the  decay  of 
that  fine  instinct  for  cooperation  which  had  made  it 
indispensable  for  him  to  stand  well  with  Tierra  Longans 
even  while  he  fleeced  them.  It  is  rather  fine,  that  exalted 
cult  of  Locality,  by  which  so  much  is  forgiven  so  long  as 
it  is  done  in  the  name  of  the  Good  of  the  Town.  But  it 
had  required  a  high  percentage  of  alcoholic  dilution  to 
carry  off  the  process  by  which  the  interest  of  the  Govern 
ment  expert  was  transferred  to  the  city  in  which  recently 
acquired  property  had  established  the  Good  of  the  Town 
as  his  prime  moral  necessity. 

It  was,  no  doubt,  due  to  Elwood's  being  not  quite 
drunk  enough  that  there  were  so  many  gaps  in  his  ac 
count  of  how  the  views  of  Lattimer  on  the  advisability 
of  creating  a  national  irrigation  district  in  Arroyo  Verde 
had  been  made  to  coincide  so  exactly  with  the  views  of 
Elwood  on  the  necessity  of  establishing  it  as  a  city  water 
supply. 

But  there  the  expert  was  now,  by  the  possession  of 
valuable  suburban  properties,  in  the  ranks  of  the  Kou- 
retes,  the  armed  and  initiate  dancers  around  the  nursing 
Empire  of  the  West. 

That  the  spoiling  of  Tierra  Longa  actually  had  some 
such  significance  for  Elwood  was  the  sore  point  of  Ken 
neth's  realization  of  it.  It  put  the  Tierra  Longans  so 
completely  out  of  the  game.  There  they  were,  like  the 
figure  in  the  group  of  the  Laocoon  he  had  once  seen, 
serpent- wrapped,  their  mouths  open  and  no  cry  to  issue 
from  it.  At  least,  none  that  the  half-gods  of  business 
could  hear.  All  their  dear  human  hopes,  —  Lem  Scud- 


THE  FORD  369 

der's  to  get  married,  —  Ab's  wife  and  her  baby,  —  an 
ant-heap  in  the  way  of  Elwood's  foot!  .  .  .  Anne's  work 
.  .  .  and  his  mother  .  .  . 

By  one  of  those  swift  fallings-together  of  incidents  far 
divided  in  point  of  time,  Kenneth  knew  perfectly  what  it 
was  his  mother  had  n't  been  able  to  endure  in  the  face 
of  Rickart's  overthrow  of  the  Homestead  Development 
Company.  ...  He  came  back  from  the  sharp  wrench  of 
anguish  to  find  that  Jamieson,  in  the  middle  of  Elwood's 
account  of  how  he  had  managed  to  conceal  the  with 
drawal  of  the  Government  enterprise  by  taking  their 
surveyors  and  chain  men  into  his  own  employment,  was 
tapping  out  his  pipe  on  the  railing  preparatory  to  going 
to  bed. 

"  'T  is  vary  instructive  to  hear  you,  Mr.  Elwood,  vary," 
—  there  was  a  burr  in  the  Superintendent's  speech  that 
was  the  index  of  his  dissatisfaction;  "but  I'm  thinkin' 
there's  a  great  deal  in  a  business  man's  life  would  never 
come  into  the  head  of  a  cattle  man." 

He  went  off  without  waiting  for  an  answer,  and,  left 
alone  with  the  junior  clerk,  Elwood  dropped  into  the 
inconsequential  confidences  of  the  partly  drunken.  As 
between  the  two  of  them  he  did  n't  mind  letting  Kenneth 
know  that  he  was  a  little  uneasy  about  the  effect  of  this 
newspaper  blow-out  on  affairs  at  Tierra  Longa.  Of  course 
if  it  had  been  Rickart,  —  but  that  was  the  rub;  Rickart 
was  somewhere  on  a  train  between  the  city  and  Chicago 
and  they  could  n't  be  sure  —  of  course  it  might  have  been 
the  Hetch-Hetchy  interests,  there  were  some  big  men  in 
that  project.  And,  of  course,  it  took  a  sizable  man  to  beat 
a  man  like  Rickart. 

"Oh,  if  you  want  to  know  who  had  that  article  put  in 


370  THE  FORD 

The  Chronicle"  Kenneth  advised  him,  "I  can  tell  you.  It 
was  my  sister." 

"  Your  —  sister!" 

Up  to  that  moment  Kenneth  had  n't  thought  of  telling, 
but  at  the  glimpse  of  Elwood's  face  by  the  flare  of  his 
cigarette,  between  the  words,  he  was  glad  he  had  done  it. 
He  said  to  himself  that  that  would  give  the  fellow  some 
thing  to  think  about!" 

What  Elwood  thought  showed  in  the  sudden  sobriety 
of  his  next  question. 

"And  just  how  does  your  sister  happen  to  be  so  well 
informed  of  the  business  of  your  employer?" 

"Oh,"  Kenneth  threw  off,  easily,  "I  was  given  to  un 
derstand  that  she  did  n't  know  anything  except  what  she 
got  from  you.  She  was  the  first  to  tell  me  anything;  in 
fact,  so  far  as  knowing  what  you  were  up  to  here  in  the 
Valley,  she  is  the  only  one  who  has  told  me  anything!" 
He  had  n't  meant  to  drag  Anne  into  it,  but  now  that  she 
was  in,  he  thought  he  might  as  well  make  a  good  job 
of  it. 

That  he  had  made  a  good  job  he  could  tell  by  the 
effort  Elwood  made  to  throw  off  his  own  question  as 
lightly. 

"And  what,  may  I  ask,  does  your  sister  expect  to  make 
of  bucking  the  Old  Man's  plans?"  Elwood  was  rapidly 
reviewing  his  memories  of  the  ride  to  Indian  Gate  to  see 
if  it  was  possible  he  had  given  himself  away  to  that  ex 
tent.  Momentarily  his  condition  overcame  him.  "The 
fair  Anne!"  he  fatuously  laughed.  It  goes  with  the  type 
that  he  should  be  the  kind  of  man  who  could  condone  an 
indiscretion  due  to  such  fairness. 

"Miss  Brent,"  Kenneth  corrected  him,  "is  a  success- 


THE  FORD  371 

ful  real-estate  dealer;  she  does  n't  consult  me  about  her 
business  undertakings.  But  she  was  on  to  you  as  soon 
as  you  began  giving  those  options." 

He  said  to  himself  that  that  ought  to  be  a  settler;  but 
immediately  Elwood  opened  his  mouth  again,  Anne's 
brother  wondered  if  he  had  n't  gone  a  little -too  far  with 
the  proof  of  Anne's  acuteness. 

"Then  I  suppose  it  was  your  sister  who-  "  Elwood 
began,  and  left  off,  making  a  to-do  about  finding  another 
match  for  his  cigarette.  Kenneth  understood  that  he  had 
meant  to  ask  if  Anne  had  put  him  up  to  the  appropria 
tion  of  the  river's  surplus  which  Elwood  had  that  day 
stumbled  upon,  but  was  unwilling  to  be  found  ignorant 
of  anything  that  might  have  been  done  under  instruc 
tion  from  Rickart.  Instinctively  Rickart's  partner  fell 
back  on  the  least  discomfiting  attitude,  that  of  amused 
masculine  appreciation  of  Anne.  "She  sure  did  slip  one 
over  on  me  ..." 

But  he  did  not  talk  any  more,  and  as  he  went  off  to  his 
room  presently  he  went  about  through  the  dining-room 
where  he  helped  himself  liberally  to  Jamieson's  whiskey 
and  soda. 

The  whole  house  was  quiet  before  Kenneth  himself 
rose  and  went  out  by  a  little  gate  at  the  corner  of  the 
patio  toward  the  open  hill,  sloping  riverward.  There  was 
a  sound  from  it  at  times  of  the  wind  moving  intermit 
tently  down  the  Arroyo.  Nearer  the  steady  rush  of  the 
creek  was  like  the  pulse  of  the  season's  vitality. 

Lights  twinkled  here  and  there  among  the  ranches  and 
went  out.  Lights  under  the  Torr'  that  was  his  home 
marked  where  Anne  kept  her  thoughtful  vigil.  A  white 
planet  hung  over  the  Saltillos  and  under  it  the  flare  of  a 


372  THE  FORD 

sheep  herder's  fire,  Soldumbehere  making  his  annual 
round.  In  the  darkness  the  sleeping  earth  suspired. 

It  was  one  of  those  nights  which  to  the  young  seem  full 
of  mysterious  portent,  presage  of  their  own  burgeoning 
powers. 

Kenneth  told  himself  that  he  had  come  out  here  to 
think;  that  there  were  decisions  to  be  made,  a  course  to 
be  thought  out.  But  now  that  he  was  here,  his  thinking 
seemed  all  to  have  been  done.  He  seemed  never  to  have 
done  anything  else  but  think,  never  to  have  really  lived  or 
experienced,  merely  to  have  said  his  life  through  to  this 
point  like  a  lesson,  and  the  lesson  was  now  learned.  He 
quivered  still  with  resentment,  disgust  with  Elwood, 
young  revolt  against  social  injustice,  against  chicanery 
and  indirection.  But  somewhere,  deeper  than  he  could 
divine,  lay  his  answer.  He  knew  that  when  he  should  be 
called  upon,  it  would  come,  letter  perfect. 

As  he  threw  himself  on  the  grassy  hill  it  was  as  if  he  had 
laid  his  head  upon  a  breast,  and  it  was  the  bosom  of  his 
own  destiny,  his  own  profoundest  fulfillment. 

All  the  time  Elwood  had  been  talking,  Kenneth  had 
held  himself  to  listen  by  sheer  intention  to  possess  himself 
of  all  the  items  of  the  plot  against  Tierra  Longa.  But 
with  these  all  in  hand  he  was  not  thinking;  at  least,  he  was 
not  thinking  what  he  should  do  about  it.  He  went  on,  as 
he  had  been  when  Elwood  left  him,  thinking  of  Anne, 
her  swift  instinct,  her  clearness,  and  of  her  handicap  of 
womanhood  and  want  of  opportunity.  He  had  not 
thought  much  of  women  except  as  every  young  man 
thinks  of  them,  in  relation  to  himself.  He  had  accepted 
for  his  sister,  as  most  men  had  for  all  women,  the  neces 
sity  that  one  or  the  other  thing  in  her  should  waste;  and 


THE  FORD  373 

he  saw  now  that  it  was  n't  necessary,  but  simply  stupid. 
It  was  n't  in  the  least  that  a  woman  could  n't  be  both  as 
big  as  Anne  was,  and  as  womanly,  but  that  men  were  n't 
big  enough  to  afford  her  both  within  the  scope  of  their 
lives.  In  a  way  Elwood  was  big  enough  .  .  .  her  mind  ran 
neck  and  neck  with  his  ...  the  recollection  of  Elwood's 
fatuous  laugh  sickened  him.  It  had  n't  been  the  quality 
of  her  mind  nor  her  equal  spirit  that  had  condoned  for 
Elwood  the  check  Anne  had  given  him. 

Overhead  the  blue  of  the  sky  deepened  toward  mid 
night,  full  of  wandering  stars  and  a  light  that  beyond  the 
earth's  penumbra  flowed  between  the  vaults.  So  outside 
the  reach  of  his  own  interests  and  resentments  his  spirit 
cleared  and  lightened.  Elwood's  estimate  of  women, 
Rickart's  of  natural  resources;  what  were  they  measured 
against  the  essential  use  of  things  .  .  .  the  earth's  shadow 
in  the  starlight  spaces?  Too  small  a  measure.  Anne  had 
called  it  a  man-made  world,  and  all  he  had  seen  of  it  went, 
to  show  that  men  had  made  it  badly.  But  what  could 
men  do  in  a  world  in  which  lands,  waters,  the  worth  of 
women,  had  no  measure  but  a  man's  personal  reaction. 
It  was  a  moment  of  deep  but  revealing  humility.  If  it 
dropped  him  wholly  outside  that  circle  of  material  suc 
cess  it  had  been  the  object  of  his  lifelong  fumbling  to  be 
"in,"  it  had  at  least  dropped  him  consolingly  into  the  lap 
of  an  ultimate  reality,  not  realized  or  measured  except  as 
he  felt  it  sustain  him. 

He  did  not  know  what  he  should  do  about  it ;  what  he 
should  say  to  Rickart,  or  how  he  should  meet  the  crisis 
of  affairs  at  Tierra  Longa;  but  he  knew  where  he  should 
be,  where  he  had  always  been,  on  the  side  of  the  unseen, 
the  immeasurable.  And  knowing  it,  he  was  taken  with 


374  THE  FORD 

the  aching  need  of  completion,  something  stronger  than 
the  desire  of  the  young  male  for  his  mate,  something 
wider  than  the  common  human  wish  for  a  home  and  off 
spring  ...  He  stood  up  and  stretched  out  his  arms  to  it 
in  the  darkness,  and  from  afar  off,  beyond  the  reach  of 
material  sense,  something  answered. 

It  was  not  until  he  was  dropping  asleep  in  his  bed,  an 
hour  later,  that  he  remembered  that  he  had  met  Virginia, 
and  without  thinking  once  of  her  relation  to  himself  or 
of  her  affair  with  Andre*. 


XIV 

RIDING  down  to  Arroyo  Verde  the  next  morning,  Ken 
neth,  instead  of  crossing  by  the  bridge  into  the  county 
road,  kept  to  the  trail  which  ran  close  to  the  Agua 
Caliente  fence  on  the  west  side  of  the  river.  It  had  hardly 
been  a  conscious  choice,  rather  an  instinctive  movement 
toward  the  more  solitary  way  wherein  he  should  have 
leisure  to  think  of  the  details  of  a  plan  of  which  he  had 
found  himself  possessed  on  the  awaking.  It  had  lain  there 
at  his  hand,  —  when  about  an  hour  after  sunrise  he  had 
snapped  wide  awake,  —  new  and  shining  like  a  sword 
which  the  night  had  forged  for  him;  and  strangely,  it  was 
shaped  out  of  all  the  doubts  and  indecisions  of  his  life.  He 
had  lain  in  his  bed  for  an  hour  playing  with  it  as  youth 
will  with  a  sword,  and  had  risen  at  last  singing  the  song  of 
the  sword.  Breakfasting  alone,  for  Jamieson  was  already 
at  the  branding-pens  and  Elwood  had  not  put  in  an  ap 
pearance,  he  spent  some  time  at  the  telephone,  dictating 
rather  a  long  telegram  to  the  Summerfield  Western  Union, 
and  had  packed  his  trunk  and  his  bag  —  for  he  had  come 
to  the  ranch  prepared  for  an  indefinite  stay — and  ordered 
a  horse  saddled. 

Elwood  joined  him  a  few  minutes  before  he  rode  out, 
still  a  little  under  the  influence  of  drink,  and  not  so  much 
so  as  not  to  be  uneasy  about  what  he  may  have  let  out  the 
night  before  in  his  psean  of  self-congratulation;  a  little 
afraid  to  trust  himself  with  the  ranchers  again,  and  yet 
beginning  to  rehearse  with  Kenneth  the  part  he  meant  to 
play  to  them.  He  was  sympathetic  almost  to  tears.  No- 


376  THE  FORD 

body  could  regret  more  the  trick  he  had  been  obliged  to 
play  on  them,  but  there  he  was,  the  victim  of  a  larger 
loyalty  .  .  . 

He  was  ready,  as  he  had  been  with  his  dissipations,  to 
let  his  noble  weakness  for  his  Own  Town  condone  what 
he  had  done  to  theirs.  The  pitiable  part  of  the  perform 
ance  was,  as  Kenneth  could  n't  help  knowing,  that  there 
were  Tierra  Longans  who  would  so  let  him  dissolve  his 
practiced  deceits  in  a  tepid  bath  of  sentiment.  It  irked 
the  junior  clerk  exceedingly  to  suspect,  as  he  did,  that 
there  was  something  in  Elwood's  weakness  that  was  even 
more  akin  to  the  spirit  of  Tierra  Longans  than  his  own 
stiff  young  idealism. 

But  once  he  struck  into  the  trail  his  purpose  retook 
him.  He  rode,  tossing  it  up  and  catching  it  again,  feeling 
himself  strong  and  able  to  make  his  own  advantage. 

It  was  a  wide  day  full  of  light.  Below  him  he  had  the 
Arroyo  as  he  rode,  with  its  windy  river  of  green,  and  on 
the  other  hand,  close  up,  the  coastwise  hills  from  whose 
tops  it  was  possible  to  make  out  the  sea  and  ships  sailing 
on  the  rim  of  the  world.  It  had  been  a  good  year,  and  out 
side  the  fence,  where  the  cattle  had  not  cropped,  the  wild 
oats  brushed  his  stirrup. 

As  he  rode  he  saw  all  the  pleasant  farms  spread  out  on 
either  side  the  river,  and  he  fitted  them  one  by  one  into 
the  plan  he  had  found  waiting  for  him.  It  was  a  good  plan, 
which  lacked  nothing  of  necessary  knowledge  of  land  and 
water  laws;  as  if  he  had  served  his  apprenticeship  to 
Rickart  and  Rickart's  expert  attorney,  Straker,  for  no 
purpose  except  to  be  furnished  for  this  hour.  Yesterday, 
in  the  course  of  the  desultory  conversation  around  his 
father's  table,  Anne  had  mentioned  two  or  three  points 


THE  FORD  377 

of  possession  covered  by  clients  of  hers,  and  though  she 
had  not  said  so,  he  inferred  that  these  had  been  taken  by 
her  advice,  acting  on  her  instinctive  guess  at  what  El- 
wood  might  be  about.  These,  too,  he  recalled  and  fitted 
into  his  own  project.  He  knew  now  that  this  plan,  which 
he  shaped  and  smoothed  as  he  rode,  had  been  hi  him 
almost  from  the  moment  of  hearing  what  threatened 
Tierra  Longa,  and  that  his  not  mentioning  it  to  any  one 
was  merely  the  evidence  of  his  no  longer  needing  any 
other  mind.  He  was  neither  Rickart's  clerk  nor  Anne's 
younger  brother,  but  his  own  man. 

From  a  mile  or  two  above  the  Agua  Caliente  bridge, 
the  river  sunk  so  far  below  the  general  level  of  the  val 
ley  that  the  trees  with  their  feet  in  its  runnels  scarcely 
topped  its  crumbling,  clayey  banks.  To  a  horseman  on 
the  trail  they  afforded  no  screen  whatever  between  it  and 
the  county  road.  It  was  about  half  past  ten  when,  at  the 
ancient  ford,  the  one  by  which  Fremont  had  crossed,  a 
mile  or  two  above  the  town,  he  saw  issuing,  from  among 
its  encompassing  orchards,  a  singular  cavalcade.  Not 
quite  long  enough  for  a  funeral,  it  had  nevertheless  an 
air  of  solemnity. 

At  its  head,  deployed  on  either  side  a  top  buggy,  rode 
four  horsemen,  with  rifles  laid  across  their  arms.  Behind 
the  buggy  were  two  led  horses,  and  following  that  a 
buckboard  with  a  trail  wagon  and  another  led  team.  Two 
more  riflemen  brought  up  the  rear,  and,  as  the  procession 
issued  into  open  country,  several  pedestrians  who  tailed 
it  dropped  back  to  watch  it  out  of  sight.  Leaving  his 
horse  among  the  willows,  Kenneth  climbed,  concealed,  to 
the  top  of  the  nearest  bank;  but  long  before  the  cavalcade 
and  its  escort  came  opposite  he  had  recognized  the  black 


378  THE  FORD 

horses,  the  black-topped  buggy,  the  jet  mustache  and 
the  cast  eye  of  Jevens,  all  the  blacker  for  the  paleness  of 
his  countenance. 

Even  without  the  account  of  it  which  he  afterward  had 
from  Lena  Scudder,  Kenneth  could  guess  what  had  hap 
pened. 

Jevens,  in  a  spirit  of  mean  triumph,  and  a  little,  no 
doubt,  under  the  influence  of  Elwood's  amiable  weakness, 
had  flaunted  his  own  complicity  in  the  theft  of  the  river, 
an  admission  which  had  been  followed  by  the  prompt  ex 
pulsion  of  himself  and  his  property  from  the  town.  It  was 
evidently  the  intention  of  the  escort  to  see  him  well  on 
his  way  to  the  county  line,  if  not  actually  across  it. 

Seeing  in  the  evidence  of  public  resentment  the  best 
possible  augury  for  the  success  of  his  plan,  Kenneth,  when 
the  cavalcade  had  past,  rode  openly  into  Arroyo  Verde. 

He  was  still,  when  he  thought  of  it,  sore  with  resent 
ment  at  the  way  in  which  he  had  been  used  by  Riekart, 
from  whom  he  had  a  right  to  expect  a  better  employment 
than  that  of  decoying  his  father's  friends  and  neighbors 
into  Elwood's  net.  There  was  a  deeper,  more  personal 
feeling  against  being  so  used  by  Frank's  father,  but  for 
the  moment  his  new-forged  purpose  pushed  it  aside. 
Watching  Jevens  driven  out,  he  had  felt  the  click  within 
him  of  a  sympathy  by  which  he  was  locked  finally  to  the 
interests  of  Tierra  Longa  as  against  every  other  claim;  but 
it  did  not  occur  to  him  that,  riding  into  town  on  one  of 
the  Caliente  saddle  horses,  he  was  still  under  the  visible 
sign  of  Riekart. 

There  were  ranchers  and  cattle  men  gathering  in  the 
plaza,  and  from  group  to  group  of  them  an  intermittent 
flow  of  sullen  and  excited  talk. 


AT    ITS    HEAD,    DEPLOYED    OX    EIT1IEU    SIDE    A    TOP    l',r(S<;Y, 

I;ODI:  KOI  R  HORSEMEN 


THE  FORD  379 

It  fell  off  as  Kenneth  approached,  and  was  succeeded 
by  strained  silence.  Behind  him  it  began  again,  with  here 
and  there  a  note  of  sneering  laughter.  He  spoke  to  one  of 
the  river  ranchers  whom  he  knew,  and  for  answer  the  man 
shot  a  long  squirt  of  tobacco  juice  which  struck  the  fore- 
flank  of  his  horse.  The  quiver  which  passed  over  the  sensi 
tive  animal  shook  for  a  moment  in  young  Brent's  soul, 
but  in  the  faces  about  him  there  was  something  that  re 
strained  the  personal  impulse.  At  the  public  hitching- 
rack  he  came  upon  the  Scudder  boys,  who  ducked  their 
heads  and  made  as  if  to  pass  without  speaking,  but  Brent 
sung  out  to  them. 

" Hello,  boys!" 

The  habit  of  old  friendliness  was  too  much  for  Lem. 
"'Lo!"  he  said,  and  sidestepped  again. 

"Look  here,  Lem,  I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

"You?"  sneered  Lem.  "What  do  you  want  with  the 
likes  of  us?  You're  workin'  for  Rickart." 

"You're  a  liar,  Lem,  if  you  never  were  one  before.  I 
quit  working  for  Rickart  yesterday  afternoon  at  half  past 
four,  exactly." 

"Fired  you,  did  he?"  gibed  Ab;  "was  n't  quite  smart 
enough,  coaxin'  your  old  friends  into  his  net." 

But  Kenneth's  high  mood  was  proof  even  against  this. 

"I  fired  myself  the  minute  I  found  out  the  game  he  was 
working  against  Tierra  Longa,"  he  corrected.  "Ab,  you 
fool,  do  you  suppose  he  would  have  dared  to  send  me 
down  here  if  I  had  known  what  he  was  up  to?"  Two  or 
three  of  the  bystanders,  who  had  refused  Kenneth's  greet 
ing,  stopped  to  listen,  curious  but  unconvinced.  "I 
came,"  he  explained  at  large,  "because  I  was  led  to  be 
lieve —  or  at  least  I  did  believe,"  he  corrected  himself 


380  THE  FORD 

in  full  justice  to  his  employer  —  "that  Mr.  Rickart  was 
really  interested  in  some  scheme  of  local  development. 
And  I  quit  him  because  there  is  n't  money  enough  any 
where  to  hire  me  to  work  for  a  man  who  is  working  against 
Tierra  Longa."  His  burning  desire  to  be  understood  by 
them  led  him  into  their  own  simple  phrases. 

Ab  gave  him  back  a  short,  barking  laugh.  "  Pretty 
good  for  a  first  attempt,  Lawyer  Brent,  but  it  ain't  quite 
good  enough.  You  'd  ought  to  take  a  few  lessons  from  your 
friend  Elwood  when  it  comes  to  soft  sawder.  Damn  him ! " 

"Shut  up,  Ab,"  Lem  interjected.  "There  ain't  no 
cause  for  us  makin'  worse  fools  of  ourselves  than  we  been 
a'ready."  * 

"Oh,  let  him  get  it  off  his  chest,"  Kenneth  conceded. 
"And  while  you're  cussing,  Ab,  you  can  cuss  a  few  for 
me.  I  don't  know  that  you've  got  anything  on  the  Old 
Man  worse  than  I  have,  sending  me  down  here,  sight  un 
seen,  to  pull  the  wool  over  my  friends  and  neighbors. 
But  don't  waste  too  much  time  cussing;  we've  got  to  get 
busy  now  and  beat  him." 

This  got  home  to  them. 

Kenneth  experienced  a  strange,  inward  thrill  at  this 
new  role  of  personal  ascendancy  which  came  so  easily. 
He  hooked  his  arm  through  Lemuel's.  "Come  over  here," 
he  urged  aside,  "I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

At  the  end  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour  Lem  was  choking 
between  the  lust  of  battle  and  an  occasional  backwash  of 
suspicion.  "It  listens  good,"  he  admitted.  "If  there's 
any  way  of  buckin'  Rickart's  game,  looks  like  that 's  the 
way  to  do  it  .  .  ."  He  fell  back  on  the  tradition  of  the  val 
ley,  "There  ain't  nobody  in  Tierry  Longway  ever  went  up 
ag'in'  the  Old  Man  and  got  away  with  it." 


THE  FORD  381 

"No  one  man,"  Kenneth  agreed,  "but  all  of  you  — 
solid!" 

Lem  spat  reflectively.  "There  ain't  all  of  us  in  Tierry 
Longway  ever  agreed  about  nothin'  yet." 

"But  they'll  have  to,  or  else  surrender.  You'll  come 
in,  you  and  Ab  .  .  . " 

"Oh,  sure  .  .  .  Don't  take  it  noways  hard  about  Ab  .  .  . 
he  was  up  'most  all  night;  the  baby  like  to  died  on  'em. 
I  guess  you  better  put  this  up  to  some  of  the  big  owners." 

All  morning  men  kept  arriving  from  the  isolated 
ranches,  and  were  fused  in  the  common  resentment.  It 
was  agreed  that  there  ought  to  be  some  kind  of  a  meeting. 
The  townspeople  who  were  responsible  for  the  expulsion 
of  Jevens  broached  it  first;  action  had  whetted  their 
appetite  for  action.  But  the  farmers  suffered,  even  in 
betrayal,  a  need  of  the  genial  bond  which  Elwood  had 
forged  for  them,  such  a  need  as  a  woman  has  for  the  lover 
who  has  abandoned  her.  Had  he  come  among  them  at 
that  moment,  those  who  had  already  felt  it  would  have 
stooped  again  under  his  stroking  hand.  Actually  their 
craving  for  the  consoling  community  of  interest  which 
Elwood's  shared  weakness  had  created  for  them,  was  issue 
of  that  same  root  of  tribal  solidarity  which  had  moved 
Kenneth  to  throw  himself  on  the  side  of  the  threatened 
valley.  But  Brent's  medium  was  strange  to  them. 

The  solitary,  rural  habit  which  admitted  them  to  a 
community  of  beguilement  could  not  lift  them  to  a  com 
munity  of  enterprise.  Not  all  at  once.  But  by  mid-day 
the  altered  demeanor  of  three  or  four  who  had  talked 
apart  with  young  Brent  began  to  spread,  about  the  plaza 
and  under  the  cottonwood  domes,  a  faint  irradiance  of 
anticipation. 


382  THE  FORD 

About  two  of  the  afternoon  the  schoolhouse  bell  was 
heard  clanging  slowly,  and  there  began  to  be  a  general 
movement  in  that  direction.  Some  forty  of  the  towns 
people  and  the  threatened  ranchers  gathered,  with  a  fair 
•sprinkling  of  women.  Just  as  the  meeting  was  called 
to  order,  the  party  from  Palomitas  came  in,  Steven  Brent 
and  Anne,  and  Peters ;  and  before  the  chairman  had  con 
cluded  his  opening  remarks,  the  meeting  took  on  a  touch 
of  grimness  from  the  entrance  of  the  Jevens  escort,  who 
came  stamping  in  at  the  back  and  stacked  their  rifles. 

After  the  opening  the  meeting  sagged  back  like  a 
horse  at  the  end  of  a  stake-rope.  There  was  the  hot,  life 
less  smell  of  unused  buildings;  blue  flies  droned  at  the 
windows. 

In  the  half-hostile  silence  Willard  arose,  and  shuffling 
on  his  feet  called  for  a  few  remarks  from  the  son  of  our 
esteemed  friend  and  neighbor.  A  sudden  murmur  went 
over  the  crowd  as  though  a  choppy  wind  played  upon  it, 
shaking  out  assent  and  remonstrance,  and  then  a  curious, 
strained  silence. 

" Friends  and  fellow  citizens/7  Brent  began;  and  then 
from  the  back  of  the  room  a  lumbering  hulk  of  a  cattle 
man,  one  of  Jevens's  escort,  heaved  himself  to  his  feet 
and  claimed  the  chairman's  attention. 

"What  I  want  ter  know,  Mr.  Chairman,  who  air  we 
listenin'  to?  Are  we  a-listenin'  to  a  emmesary  of  the  Old 
Man,  or  are  we  a-listenin'  to  a  skunk  in  sheep's  clothing?  " 

The  chairman  shuffled  in  his  turn  and  passed  the  ques 
tion  on  to  Kenneth. 

"I  am  not,"  he  said,  "in  the  employment  of  T.  Rick- 
art." 

"Since  when?"  said  another  voice  from  the  audience. 


THE  FORD  383 

"  Since  the  moment  I  read  what  is  printed  in  this  pa 
per."  He  waved  the  betraying  sheet  before  them.  For 
the  first  time  he  looked  over  at  his  family.  Steven  Brent 
gravely  nodded ;  Anne  looked  at  the  fingers  of  her  gloves. 

Kenneth  had  never  conducted  a  case  in  court,  but  he 
had  watched  Straker,  that  most  expert  of  special  plead 
ers. 

Half-consciously  he  modeled  the  first  embarrassed 
moves  of  his  speech  on  what  he  remembered  of  the  firm's 
senior  lawyer:  driving  straightaway  to  the  point  until  it 
was  established,  a  shining  mark,  the  focus  of  all  atten 
tion,  and  then  coming  back  to  pick  up  his  audience  and 
drive  them  toward  it,  a  handy  missile.  And  the  point 
was,  not  what  they  might  feel  and  think  about  Rickart  or 
the  method  by  which  he  had  nearly  stolen  their  river,  but 
whether  they  meant  to  let  him  get  away  with  it.  Item 
by  item  he  laid  it  out  for  them:  as  matters  stood,  Rickart 
did  not  own  enough  of  the  water  of  Arroya  Verde  to  pay 
its  carriage  to  San  Francisco. 

Find  a  way  to  keep  him  out  of  possession  of  any  more 
of  it  and  the  river  stayed  in  its  arroyo.  Was  there,  then, 
such  a  way,  defended  from  Rickart's  practiced  cunning 
and  their  own  need  which  from  time  to  time  betrayed 
them  to  him? 

There  was  such  a  way;  one  that  had  behind  it  all  that 
young  Brent  had  learned  of  law  in  six  years  with  the  Old 
Man  under  the  hand  of  Straker.  It  all  depended  on  their 
sticking  together.  They  were  to  put  their  land  and 
waters  in  escrow,  tying  them  for  a  price  which  would 
render  Rickart's  scheme  practically  prohibitive.  In  the 
unlikely  event  of  his  rising  to  that  price,  it  would,  at 
least,  let  them  all  out  of  Tierra  Longa  together;  it  would 


384  THE  FORD 

protect  them  absolutely  from  the  slow  defeat,  the  dwin 
dling  values,  the  long-drawn  bitterness  which  confronted 
them.  They  had  only  to  stick  together.  It  was  as  simple 
as  that.  Too  simple  by  half. 

Tacking  always  toward  its  objective,  blown  out  of  the 
course  by  prejudice  and  slanting  back  on  a  partial  ideal 
ism,  what  more  natural  to  the  rural  mind  than  to  suppose 
that  whoever  first  reaches  the  goal  does  so  by  an  excess  of 
cunning  —  a  more  complex  indirection?  To  catch  Rick- 
art-birds  one  must  make  nets  and  snares;  they  were  not 
to  be  arrested  by  the  simple  device  of  ring  around  a  rosy. 

Perhaps  Brent,  as  he  talked,  knew  that  he  did  not  have 
his  audience  with  him.  He  might  have  seen,  as  he  faced 
them,  how,  by  as  much  as  they  had  given  of  themselves 
to  the  soil,  they  were  made  defenseless  against  this  attack 
on  it.  For  a  man  lives  with  his  land  as  with  a  mistress, 
courting  her,  suiting  himself  to  her  humors,  contriving 
as  he  can  that  her  moods,  her  weathers  shall  drive  for  and 
not  against  him.  And  in  time  he  becomes  himself  subject 
to  such  shifts  and  seasons.  He  cannot  handle  himself; 
he  is  to  be  handled. 

But  if  Kenneth  understood  that  this  was  the  case  with 
the  farmers  of  Tierra  Longa,  he  gave  no  sign.  If  he  felt  in 
them,  what  had  struck  so  sorely  on  his  father,  the  waste  of 
what  they  had  put  into  the  earth,  the  irredeemable  waste 
of  it,  he  was  silent  on  that  also.  Beyond  some  streaks  of 
whiteness  which  came  into  his  face  as  he  rose  to  the  first 
challenge,  his  whole  bearing  was  free  from  emotion.  The 
fire  which  forged  his  sword  had  gone  out ;  it  was  the  clean, 
cold  blade  he  offered  them.  He  took  all  for  granted,  their 
love  for  the  land,  their  right  to  it;  spoke  as  man  to  man, 
neither  Rickart's  clerk  nor  the  tool  of  Elwood.  He  was 


THE  FORD  385 

Brent  of  Palomitas.  He  had  the  poise  of  three  genera 
tions  of  landholders. 

That  was  how  he  struck,  all  unaware,  the  secret  which 
it  had  been  his  six  years'  quest  to  discover,  the  secret  of 
the  Old  Man's  success;  the  trick  of  taking  the  shortest 
distance  between  two  points,  ignoring  the  human  ele 
ment.  But  being  so  sure  in  his  heart  that  he  worked  in 
the  community  interest,  he  failed,  almost  as  completely  as 
Rickart  had  done,  to  win  the  community's  cooperation. 

So  at  the  end  of  three  quarters  of  an  hour  he  came  to 
the  end  of  his  statement  with  his  audience  cold.  They 
shuffled  a  little  at  his  close,  broke  out  here  and  there  in 
half-audible  comment,  and  fell  silent.  Lem  Scudder, 
carefully  instructed  thereto,  moved  a  resolution  favoring 
Brent's  plan  and  calling  for  the  appointment  of  a  com 
mittee  to  formulate  it.  Discussion  was  called  for,  which 
gathered  and  broke  in  short,  irrelevant  flashes.  Nobody 
questioned  much  nor  proposed  any  alternative;  nothing 
could  lay  hold  on  minds  so  preoccupied  with  anger.  A 
more  practiced  speaker  would  have  known  how  to  draw 
their  resentment  to  the  explosive  point,  clearing  the  way 
to  action.  Brent  himself  knew  it,  but  his  defense  was  too 
much  in  the  manner  of  Rickart's  own  campaigns  to  ap 
pear  adequate.  They  had  damned  Rickart  often  as  the 
passionless  embodiment  of  money-grabbing;  but  it  was 
not  so  they  realized  him.  Such  damage  as  they  stood  to 
meet  could  not  have  been  plotted  in  cold  blood,  not  with 
out  passion  be  defeated.  To  sign  their  names  to  a  paper 
and  sit  tight  was  too  tame  a  medicine  for  their  burning 
sense  of  injury. 

The  river  rancher  who  had  first  challenged  Kenneth's 
loyalty  put  the  sense  of  the  meeting. 


386  THE  FORD 

"Mr.  Chairman:  I  don't  know  as  I've  anything  to  say 
against  the  proposition  Mr.  Brent  has  put  up  to  us.  I 
reckon  he 's  a  pretty  fine  lawyer  and  knows  the  straight 
of  it.  Looks  mighty  slick  the  way  he's  read  it  out  to  us; 
but  that's  just  the  trouble  with  it.  Looks  like  them  op 
tions  some  of  us  been  signin'  lately.  Mr.  Button,  here," 
—  Button  was  the  town's  own  lawyer,  who  had  pom 
pously,  if  somewhat  reluctantly,  expressed  his  entire  legal 
agreement  with  Mr.  Brent,  —  "  Button  has  given  it  as 
his  opinion  that  that's  the  law  of  it,  but  what  I  want  ter 
know  is,  whose  side  the  law  is  goin'  to  turn  out  to  be  on, 
ours  or  Rickart's?  " 

He  sat  down  amid  grunts  of  agreement  and  one  or  two 
voices  raised  in  protest.  Lem  Scudder  was  on  his  feet, 
but  the  chairman  passed  him  over  for  Baff,  who  was  dis 
posed  to  be  judicious. 

Nobody,  it  appeared,  had  a  higher  appreciation  of  the 
legal  skill  which  had  been  exhibited.  Mr.  Baff  allowed  it 
was  a  right  smart  statement.  But  the  human  mind,  ac 
cording  to  Mr.  Baff,  required  humoring;  it  was  n't  pos 
sible,  now,  was  it?  to  switch  off  as  they  had  been  required 
to  do  within  an  hour,  thinking  of  Brent  as  employed  by 
the  Old  Man,  and  think  of  him  as  working  for  Tierry 
Longway;  he'd  leave  it  to  Mr.  Brent  if  it  was  easy. 

"I  certainly  admit  the  difficulty,"  Kenneth  met  him 
good-humoredly. 

"Well,  then,"  Mr.  Baff  put  it  rather  intimately,  "it's 
this  away;  if  we  go  into  this,  I  allow  we  got  to  go  in  bag  an' 
baggage,  puttin'  all  we  got  into  the  pot,  Mr.  Brent  cer- 
tifyin'  that  it 's  the  sure  dope  for  what  we  got  stacked  up 
against  us.  Now,  I  put  it  to  you,  gentlemen  and  Mr. 
Brent,  don't  it  look  like  Mr.  Brent 'd  ought  to  be  in  with 


THE  FORD  387 

us?  Don't  it  seem  like  we'd  be  easier  in  our  minds  if  Mr. 
Brent  had  something  he  could  put  in  with  us?  Don't  it 
sort  of  look  that  way?"  It  was  the  sense  of  the  meeting 
that  it  did.  "I  ask  you,  fellow  citizens,"  demanded  Mr. 
Baff,  growing  easier  as  he  felt  his  audience  with  him,  "to 
what  extent,  if  any,  Mr.  Brent  is  in  with  us." 

"Well,"  the  chairman  agreed  by  way  of  passing  it  on 
to  Kenneth,  "I  reckon  that's  a  fair  question." 

"Oh,  yes,"  Brent  conceded,  knitting  his  brows  slightly, 
"  it 's  fan-  enough.  If  I  have  n't  stated  to  what  extent  I  'm 
willing  to  come  in  with  you,  it  is  because  I  have  n't  been 
sure  this  was  the  time  and  place  for  it.  I  rather  thought 
the  committee"  -he  looked  at  Willard  and  the  Scud- 
ders,  but  though  he  must  have  known  what  it  meant  to 
her,  he  did  not  look  at  Anne.  The  attention  of  the  meeting 
stayed  breathless  on  the  point  of  his  indecision;  it  rose 
perceptibly  as  it  watched  him  catch  consent  from  the  eyes 
of  two  or  three  who  knew  what  was  in  his  mind.  "Well, 
if  you  think  best,  gentlemen,  ...  I'm  with  you  to  the 
extent  of  thirty  thousand  cubic  inches  of  the  river  sur 
plus." 

If  he  had  dashed  it  over  them  he  could  hardly  have 
taken  them  more  by  surprise.  They  were  startled  by  it, 
half  a  dozen  of  them,  into  following  Lem  Scudder's  lead 
of  applause,  but  sharply  stopped  to  hear  what  else  the 
speaker  had  to  say. 

"I'm  with  you  further  than  that,  gentlemen.  I'm 
with  you  to  the  extent  of  being  willing  to  transfer  a  con 
trolling  interest  in  the  river  surplus,  which  I  filed  upon  in 
my  own  right  six  weeks  ago,  to  any  properly  constituted 
company  of  those  of  you  who  will  develop  and  use  it." 

He  broke  forth  largely  into  an  account  of  how  they 


388  THE  FORD 

might  bring  about  for  themselves  all  those  things  that 
Elwood  had  made  seem  bright  and  easy  of  attainment. 
Though  he  did  not  know  how  much  Elwood  had  worked 
for  him  there,  kneading  the  stiff  stuff  of  the  rural  imagi 
nation,  they  were  fired  at  last;  touched  with  that  passion 
for  togetherness  which  is  the  ravishment  of  noble  souls 
and  the  refuge  of  weak  ones.  So  for  as  long  as  it  served, 
he  achieved  the  miracle  of  cooperation.  The  resolution 
was  passed  and  cheered.  Tierra  Longa  was  awake,  and 
the  Old  Man  had  been  caught  napping. 

"Well,  Dad  ? "  Kenneth  shook  himself  free  from  ques 
tion  and  congratulation  to  clap  his  father  on  the  shoulder. 

Brent  beamed  upon  him. 

"Very  well,  son  I" 

"Well,  Anne,  —  can  you  give  me  a  job  at  the  ranch  for 
my  board  and  clothes  —  Anne?" 

Anne  was  crying. 

"Oh,  Ken,  your  one  chance  — " 

' l  You  bet  it 's  my  chance.  You  watch  and  see  what  1 11 
do  with  it!" 

Being  at  his  most  triumphant  he  was  most  male,  and 
a  little  obtuse.  It  was  arranged,  however,  that  'Nacio 
was  to  meet  Kenneth  at  headquarters  about  five,  to 
take  away  his  trunk.  He  would  not  spend  another  night 
under  the  same  roof  with  Elwood. 

Kenneth,  after  a  short  session  with  the  committee, 
found  nobody  at  Agua  Caliente  but  Jamieson,  smoking 
over  the  day's  accounts.  "I  wired  my  resignation  this 
morning,"  he  said  by  way  of  explaining  why  he  was  leav 
ing.  He  saw  it  was  not  necessary  to  tell  the  Superintend 
ent  anything  of  the  afternoon's  proceedings.  Nobody 
knew  how  news  was  carried  to  Agua  Caliente;  it  was 


THE  FORD  389 

thought  Tom  Dinnant,  the  fence-rider,  might  have  some 
thing  to  do  with  it,  but  there  was  nothing  could  go  on  in 
the  valley  and  the  ranch  not  hear  of  it. 

"Eh,  well  —  you  know  your  own  business,  Mr.  Brent," 
was  the  Superintendent's  only  comment,  but  he  came 
out  to  see  the  boy  off  with  his  baggage. 

They  stood  together  while  'Nacio  fumbled  with  the 
trunk,  looking  out  over  the  valley  now  filling  with  the 
evening  light,  banded  and  barred  through  the  coastwise 
canons.  Kenneth,  who  liked  the  blunt  Scot,  sought  for 
just  the  phrase  to  justify  what  might  easily  seem  a  dis 
loyalty  to  his  employer,  but  found  nothing  better  than 
"  There 's  something,  you  know,  about  a  man's  own  coun 
try  .  .  .  the  country  he  was  born  and  grew  up  in  -  "  and 
fell  silent  watching  the  homing  flight  of  the  herons. 

Jamieson  grudged  him  nothing.  "  'T  is  a  great  country; 
a  man  might  do  much  for  it." 

"Sure,"  Kenneth  rose  to  the  local  slogan,  "it's  a  great 
country." 

Encouraged,  he  ventured  a  discreet  suggestion: — 

"If  I  knew  when  Mr.  Rickart  is  expected,  I  would  try 
to  see  him  myself,  before  —  anybody  else,  I  mean." 

Jamieson  nodded.  "Man  to  man;  't  is  better  so.  If  I 
knew  myself  I'd  tell  you." 

But  it  proved,  after  all,  unnecessary  for  Kenneth  to 
contrive  to  meet  Rickart  at  Agua  Caliente.  About  mid- 
afternoon  of  the  next  day,  while  the  committee  was  sit 
ting  in  the  town's  one  hotel,  Rickart's  car  came  careening 
up  the  valley  with  a  begoggled,  dust-disguised  chauffeur, 
and  Rickart  chewing  his  cigar  in  the  tonneau.  With  his 
usual  imperviousness  to  the  local  feeling  about  him,  the 
Old  Man  stopped  his  car  at  the  hotel  for  a  drink.  Or 


390  THE  FORD 

stopped  for  his  own  purpose  to  bring  on  this  encounter 
with  his  former  clerk.  The  committee,  issuing  from  the 
green  and  shadowed  cave  of  the  bar,  came  plump  upon 
him.  For  his  own  purpose  Rickart  chose  not  to  take  the 
meeting  seriously. 

"Well,  Ken,"  —he  worked  his  cigar  to  the  corner  of 
his  mouth  the  better  to  clear  the  way  for  any  expression 
the  occasion  seemed  to  call  for,  —  "been  stirring  up  the 
town  against  your  employer,  eh?" 

"Well,  not  until  I  had  sent  you  my  resignation,"  Ken 
neth  corrected  him.  He  was  more  moved  at  this  unex 
pected  encounter  than  he  had  expected  to  be  or  cared  to 
show. 

"Well,  my  boy,  it  seems  to  me  you  might  have  waited 
until  I  had  accepted  your  resignation.  I  have  n't  been 
such  a  bad  employer  as  that  comes  to."  He  had  n't,  as 
Kenneth  miserably  knew. 

"I  should  have  preferred  that  myself,  sir.  But  the 
situation  here  —  the  people,  seemed  to  need  me." 

"Uh  —  the  people."  Such  people  as  were  within  reach 
strained  their  ears.  They  knew  they  had  no  business  to 
listen,  and  pretended  not  to,  but  a  consuming  curiosity 
had  them  in  its  grip.  "T-h-e"  —  long  drawn  out  — 
"p-e-o-p-l-e."  The  cigar  came  round  to  an  angle  slightly 
skeptical.  Suddenly  there  was  a  change  of  tone.  "Look 
here,  Ken,  jump  into  the  car  and  come  down  the  road 
with  me  a  piece.  I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

Kenneth  colored  and  was  firm.  "I'm  sorry,  Mr. 
Rickart.  It  has  n't  been  easy  for  me  to  make  the  people 
understand  that  I  actually  have  come  over  to  their  side 
and  am  against  you  in  this  fight  ..."  Sweat  of  pure  dis 
comfort  broke  out  on  his  forehead. 


THE  FORD  391 

"I  see.  And  you  can't  have  a  few  minutes'  chat  with 
your  second  father  for  fear  the  p-eo-ple  .  .  ."  Rickart 
took  his  cigar  out  of  his  mouth  and  sat  for  a  while  as  if 
taking  counsel  with  it.  " What's  this  about  Anne?"  he 
broke  out  abruptly.  "Elwood  tells  me  it  was  she  that 
spilled  the  thing  to  the  newspapers.'* 

Kenneth  cursed  himself  for  having  brought  his  sister 
into  it. 

" Anne's  on  your  side  — " 

"Anne  has  sense." 

"She  was  so  much  on  your  side  that  she  thought  Mr. 
Etwood  might  be  putting  something  over  on  you.  She 
was  only  trying  to  find  out  what  he  was  up  to.  The  paper 
found  out  the  rest." 

He  had  it  on  the  end  of  his  tongue  to  say  that  it  was  in 
his,  Rickart's,  interest  Anne  had  suggested  his  appro 
priation  of  the  surplus  waters,  but  he  feared  to  involve 
her  further.  "  Anne,"  he  finished  mendaciously,  "does  n't 
approve  of  me." 

"I've  always  said  Anne  was  the  business  man  of  the 
family."  Heaven  send  he  would  go  on  thinking  so. 
"Well,  I  did  n't  see  your  resignation;  they  told  me  it  was 
in  the  office,  but  I  suppose  you  complied  with  the  usual 
formalities." 

"Formalities?"  Kenneth  was  puzzled. 

"Turned  over  all  the  papers,  properties,  et  cetera?" 

"  All  the  papers  and  the  power  of  attorney  are  in  my 
desk  at  the  office,  —  I  shan't  put  in  any  claim  for  salary 
or  expense  after  the  tenth,  if  that's  what  you  mean  .  .  ." 

"And  the  surplus  water  appropriation  that  you  filed  as 
my  agent,  have  you  turned  that  over?" 

"As  your  agent — "  Kenneth  saw  the  pit  open  be- 


392  THE  FORD 

neath  him.  He  should  have  been  first  to  mention  that 
appropriation  and  as  whose  agent.  He  gathered  himself 
in  one  concentrated  effort  not  to  look  as  confounded  as  he 
felt. 

"Why,  yes,"  Rickart  pleasantly  chatted,  "rights  and 
properties  acquired  by  the  agent,  you  know  .  .  .  but  I 
need  n't  quote  law  to  you.  Straker  said  the  transfer 
had  n't  come  in  yet,  and  I  told  him  if  he  did  n't  get  it  in 
a  few  days  to  write  to  you." 


XV 

EVER  since  Ellis  Trudeau's  first  visit  to  Palomitas  the 
deep  veranda  opening  on  the  formal  garden  had  become 
the  place  of  family  councils.  It  was,  Anne  openly  averred, 
largely  for  Ellis'e  gift  of  laying  hands,  soft  and  service 
able,  on  the  hidden  centers  of  personal  relations,  that  Anne 
paid  her;  the  stenography  and  bookkeeping  were  thrown 
in  for  good  measure.  For  Anne,  seeing  in  the  shut  gar 
den,  refurnished  from  all  that  they  could  recall  of  their 
mother's  preferences,  only  the  place  of  regretful  memo 
ries,  would  have  swept  the  family  life  aside  and  apart  from 
it.  The  pomegranate  hedge  stood  breast-high  about  it, 
but  the  slope  of  the  land  gave  them  full  from  the  veranda 
the  perspective  of  the  valley.  It  looked  a  little  away 
from  the  river,  toward  Mariposa,  and  took  in  above  its 
western  hedge  the  line  of  the  Caliente  fence  and  the  breach 
in  the  Coast  Range,  curving  seaward.  Or,  if  you  chose, 
sitting  low,  it  took  in  nothing  at  all  but  the  banks  of  red 
geraniums,  the  new-planted  beds,  and  the  red  rambler 
Working  close  under  the  waves,  with  here  and  there  a 
lifted,  inquiring  streamer.  Cushions  and  hammock  had 
made  their  appearance  there,  a  low  table  where  Addie 
took  her  mending;  a  place  cleared  for  Steven  Brent's  pipe 
and  paper;  all  this  within  three  months  from  the  time 
Anne  had  come  hurrying  in  from  the  potrero  to  find  that 
Ellis  had  received  there  some  former  friend  of  her 
mother's  calling  from  Rancho  Toyon,  and  that  her  father, 
to  whose  sensibilities  Anne  had  feared  a  wound,  was 
gravely  pleased  by  it.  "Land  o'  livin',"  said  Addie,  who 


394  THE  FORD 

was  placidly  preparing  a  tea-tray  under  Miss  Trudeau's 
direction,  "it's  your  ma's  memory  they're  callin'  on, 
anyway!" 

"It  lets  them  know,"  Ellis  explained,  "that  he  did  n't 
fail  her;  that  he's  keeping  right  along  with  the  sort  of 
thing  she  liked  best  —  she  would  have  liked  it,  would 
n't  she?" 

"Yes,"  Anne  considered;  "she  would  have  liked  it. 
It's  exactly  the  sort  of  thing  she  tried  to  get  out  of  us 
when  we  were  children  .  .  .  some  kind  of  social  cere 
monial  ...  we  were  as  wild  as  little  Indians,  but  I  don't 
see  how  you  knew!" 

"Oh,  well,"  —  Ellis  was  serious,  —  "knowing  what 
other  people  like  is  my  profession,  I  suppose."  She  made 
a  little  moue.  "Andy  has  given  me  lots  of  practice." 

That  was  how  it  happened  that  the  first  intimation 
Kenneth  gave  to  anybody  of  the  new  turn  affairs  had 
taken  was  given  to  Anne  and  his  father,  about  four  of  the 
afternoon  that  Rlckart  came  to  Tierra  Longa.  He  had 
hurried  away  from  the  town  not  to  give  room  for  widen 
ing  rings  to  spread  from  the  shock  his  talk  with  Rickart 
had  occasioned  him. 

"But,  Ken,  what  can  he  do?" 

"Sue  me  for  recovery  of  rights  acquired  while  I  was 
acting  as  his  agent." 

"But  you  were  n't.  If  anything,  you  were  my  agent; 
I  put  you  up  to  it." 

"If  you  could  prove  that .  .  .  but  I  was  in  Rickart's 

pay." 

"Not  out  of  office  hours,  surely.  I  can  prove  that  I  sent 
for  you,  that  I  brought  you  out  here,  and  my  hired  man 
took  you  to  the  point  where  the  filing  was  made.  Why 


THE  FORD  305 

can't  your  best  answer  to  his  demand  be  that  you  have 
turned  your  rights  over  to  me?" 

"You  forget  I've  promised  to  turn  over  a  controlling 
interest  to  the  Citizens'  Committee." 

Anne  choked  at  that. 

"I'm  not  sure  you  had  any  right  to  do  that  without 
consulting  me." 

"Oh,  Anne,  surely  you  see  that  I  could  n't  just  hold  on 
to  it  as  a  plum  I'd  picked  out  for  myself?"  Perhaps  be 
cause  he  was  doubtful  whether  he  had  been  right,  Ken 
neth  was  the  more  anxious  to  appear  so.  "I  had  to  go  in 
with  them,  if  I  wanted  them  with  me." 

Anne  waived  discussion. 

"Even  then  I  don't  see  why  it  wouldn't  be  a  good 
move  for  me  to  claim  you  as  my  agent  before  Rickart 
does?" 

"Well,  I've  already  told  him  before  witnesses  that  you 
don't  approve  of  me." 

"Ken!  How  could  you? " 

He  could  easily,  he  said,  because  he  did  n't  intend  she 
should  be  mixed  up  in  this.  Did  she  suppose,  just  when 
she  'd  built  up  her  own  business  so  successfully,  she  was 
to  be  allowed  to  risk  it  on  him?  "  Besides,"  -  he  hesi 
tated  for  the  least  offensive  phrase,  "I  don't  want  you, 
Anne.  I  don't  want  any  help,  and  —  don't  think  me  a 
thundering  egotist,  sis,  but  I  don't  want  any  advice.  I  've 
got  to  see  this  thing  through  on  my  own  ...  I've  got  to 
come  through.  I  don't  want  to  be  influenced  by  fear  of 
what  would  happen  to  somebody  I'm  tied  up  with." 

"He's  right,  Anne;  we  must  n't  tie  him  in  any  way," 
Steven  Brent  agreed. 

Anne  tapped  with  her  fingers  on  the  arm  of  his  chair. 


396  THE  FORD 

"But  if  it  is  to  my  interest  to  fight  this  scheme  for  tak 
ing  the  water  away  — " 

Well,  it  just  wasn't,  Kenneth  told  her.  Palomitas 
was  n't  affected,  or,  if  it  was,  it  could  n't  be  unfavorably. 
It  would  take  two  or  three  years  to  build  that  dam  and 
aqueduct;  she  was  to  think  of  the  profit  she'd  make  sell 
ing  her  produce  on  the  spot  without  hauling  it  to  Sum- 
merfield  .  .  .  and  all  the  land  that  would  be  turned  back 
to  wild  pasture  for  the  sheep  .  .  . 

"But,  Ken,  how  will  you  manage;  about  money  and 
everything?" 

"I've  some  stock,  things  I've  picked  up  hi  the  office. 
I  could  realize  two  or  three  thousand  — " 

"Two  or  three  thousand  for  a  lawsuit  with  Rickart!" 
Anne  scoffed. 

"Oh,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  don't  think  it  will  come  to  that. 
There 's  something  I  'm  much  more  afraid  of.  Something 
that  will  come  cheaper  than  a  suit  at  law  and  serve  his 
purpose  exactly  as  well;  and  that  is  the  idea  of  a  suit," 

"You  think  he  simply  means  to  throw  a  scare  into  the 
committee?"  Anne's  quick  mind  caught  him  up. 

"Well,  he  said  it  where  they  could  all  hear  him,  Wil- 
lard  and  Baff  and  Scudder.  It  is  n't  Rickart's  way  to 
threaten.  If  he  means  to  sue,  he  just  sues." 

"  If  he  makes  that  play  so  early,"  Anne  concluded, "  it 's 
because  he  is  somehow  pressed  for  time.  But  we  can  keep 
on  for  a  year  or  two  and  hold  that  surplus  water  right 
even  without  the  Citizens'  Committee.  The  thing  for  us 
to  do  is  to  fight  for  time.  I'm  having  Peters  file  on  that 
eighty  between  us  and  the  river.  Within  six  months  I  can 
have  somebody  on  every  unpatented  acre  that  the  surplus 
ditch  will  cover.  We  can  give  water  for  work  on  the  ditch 


THE  FORD  397 

and  if  he  scares  off  Arroyo  Verde,  make  a  community  of 


our  own/' 


"  Anne,  you're  a  wonder!  Rickart  ought  to  have  taken 
you  into  partnership." 

"He  ought,"  she  admitted;  " as  it  is  I  could  give  him 
a  run  for  his  money."  She  alternately  drummed  and 
frowned  as  she  planned,  having  full  sight  of  the  quarry 
and  all  the  moves  of  the  game.  Kenneth  stretched  him 
self  and  paced  up  and  down  the  veranda. 

Clever  as  she  was,  her  brother  was  not  moved  to  join 
forces  with  her.  He  did  not  want  Anne,  he  did  not  feel 
to  want  anybody  on  his  side;  for  it  was  not  so  important 
to  him  at  this  moment  whether  he  won  or  went  down, 
but  to  know  with  what  he  fought.  He  suffered  the  need, 
so  inexplicable  to  women,  of  aloofness;  to  see  straight,  to 
swing  clear,  and  to  come  to  grips. 

In  the  hour  or  two  which  had  passed  between  the  pass 
ing  of  Rickart  and  his  own  flight  from  the  town,  which 
he  had  delayed  just  long  enough  not  to  make  it  seem  pre 
cipitant,  Kenneth  had  not  had  time  to  think  out  this  new 
phase  very  clearly.  He  thought  slowly  for  the  most  part, 
and  was  more  than  pleased  with  this  new  instinct  in  him, 
which,  working  ahead  of  his  intelligence,  had  operated  to 
keep  Anne  out  of  it,  since  the  end  of  such  thinking  as  he 
had  been  able  to  do  was,  that  at  any  cost  to  himself  she 
must  be  kept  out.  She  must  be  kept  in  touch  with  that 
better  side  of  the  Old  Man  from  which  had  sprung  his 
support  of  her  undertaking  at  Palomitas,  and  as  far  as 
possible  from  that  revealing  acquaintance  with  Rickart's 
methods  which  gnawed  at  the  root  of  his  own  lifelong 
association.  Let  Anne  think  as  long  as  she  would  that 
Rickart's  threat  was  mere  bluff,  to  frighten  the  ranchers 


398  THE  FORD 

of  Tierra  Longa.  It  was  not  unlikely  that  it  should  be  so; 
Rickart  had  no  claim  upon  him,  absolutely  no  legal  claim. 
But  the  certainty  to  which  Kenneth  measured  his  pacing 
was,  that  if  it  became  necessary  to  the  Rickart  Interests 
that  a  case  should  be  found,  there  would  be  a  case  against 
him. 

All  that  flood  of  competency  upon  which  the  Old  Man's 
enterprises  floated,  stirred  by  this  menace,  turned  up,  as 
the  white  undersides  of  poplars,  glimmering  bay,  and  dark 
shades  of  oak,  were  revealed  in  the  stirring  of  the  Arroyo's 
leafy  surfaces.  Incidents  of  old  cases  turned  up,  half 
hints  and  guesses,  letters  which  the  defendant  denied 
receiving,  copies  of  which  showed  between  appropriate 
leaves  of  the  letter-press  .  .  .  instructions  protested,  but 
sworn  to  by  one  or  another  in  the  Old  Man's  employ  .  .  . 
conversations  overheard  and  noted;  turned  up  a  current 
rumor  about  the  office  that  the  Old  Man's  private  sanc 
tum  was  contrived  for  the  express  purpose  of  overhearing; 
turned  up  inexplicable  rises  in  fortune  of  certain  witnesses, 
inexplicable  disappearances.  What  was  a  case  against  a 
junior  clerk  to  men  who  had  effected  the  shift  of  a  Gov 
ernment  bureau  and  yet  saved  the  face  of  an  unimpeach 
able  civic  loyalty! 

If  Rickart  offered  him  fight,  Brent  knew  that  he  must 
fight  to  a  finish;  but  he  knew  also,  in  reason,  that  he  could 
n't  win,  and  that  was  the  reason  Anne  must  be  kept  out 
of  it.  For  it  mattered  to  Anne  whether  she  lost  or  won, 
and  at  the  moment  nothing  mattered  so  much  to  young 
Brent  as  that  he  should  take  his  own  measure.  Whatever 
he  was  up  against,  —  laws,  institutions,  the  passions  and 
prejudices  of  other  men,  —  he  must  know  once  for  all  its 
nature  and  its  name.  All  around  him  for  the  past  few 


THE  FORD  399 

days  he  had  felt  the  questions  he  had  put  to  life  falling 
in  with  their  answers,  two  and  two.  In  a  little  while,  if 
nobody  stopped  him,  he  would  swing  into  his  own  proper 
stride  .  .  . 

"Look  here,  Anne,  you've  got  to  promise  that  you'll 
keep  out  of  this.  Has  n't  she,  father?  If  you  don't,  I  '11 
not  stay  around.  I  '11  go  down  to  the  hotel  and  live  until 
this  is  settled." 

"Ken,  as  if  we  would  let  you!" 

"Unless  you  promise.   Is  n't  that  right,  father?" 

"I  think  he's  right,  Anne." 

"Oh,  well," — Anne  conceded  the  point;  "but  there's 
no  necessity  for  your  behaving  as  if  we'd  disowned  you. 
Mr.  Rickart  is  n't  so  small  as  that!"  And  no  one  making 
any  answer  to  this  she  was  off  in  a  new  direction.  "I'm 
glad  you  have  all  that  money,  Ken.  Of  course  I  could 
have  spared  you  a  little,  but  I  think  I'm  going  to  buy 
a  car."  They  laughed  at  her  characteristic  thrust  against 
misfortune.  It  was  always  Anne's  way,  in  the  face  of 
threatening,  to  make  a  sudden  new  assault  and  recoup  in 
another  direction  what  she  stood  to  lose.  If  she  thought 
now  of  buying  a  car,  it  was  because  she  foresaw  the  neces 
sity  of  lifting  her  business  to  the  point  where  a  car  would 
become  indispensable. 

The  laugh  brought  Virginia  out  of  her  room,  where  she 
had  discreetly  lingered  while  the  Brents  discussed  this 
new  check  to  their  affairs.  It  was  intolerable  to  Virginia 
to  be  kept  out  of  things,  but  even  to  Virginia  it  was  plain 
that  the  rape  of  Arroyo  Verde,  the  outrage  of  which  had 
brought  her  in  swift,  warm  partisanship  to  his  side,  had 
dropped  like  a  cold  curtain  between  herself  and  Kenneth. 

If  in  his  reasonable  hours  he  did  full  justice  to  the  im- 


400  THE  FORD 

pulse  which  led  her  to  range  herself  with  him  and  the 
ranchers  of  Tierra  Longa,  his  appreciation  was,  for  any 
purpose  that  would  have  served  Virginia,  much  too  rea 
sonable.  Far  from  throwing  them  together,  as  in  her  un 
premeditated  flight  to  him  she  had  no  doubt  imagined, 
on  the  crest  of  that  indignation  which  the  spectacle  of 
social  injustice  so  easily  excited  in  her,  Virginia  had 
found  herself  cast  away  on  the  coast  of  a  situation  to 
which  not  even  Steven  Brent's  grave  agreement  with  her 
resounding  phrases  admitted  her.  It  was  not  that  they 
slighted  her  interest  in  them:  the  Brents  were  far  too 
polite  for  that;  but  with  all  their  politeness  they  were 
unable  to  make  out  of  Virginia's  feeling  for  them  anything 
that  would  take  the  place  of  just  naturally  feeling  the 
same  thing  at  the  same  time.  Nothing,  not  even  the  re 
leasing  laughter  with  which  Anne's  sallies  in  the  face  of 
financial  discomfiture  were  greeted  by  her  family,  could 
give  to  Virginia's  reappearance  anything  but  the  status  of 
an  old  and  well-intentioned  friend  of  the  family,  who  had 
chosen  a  rather  inopportune  occasion  for  making  a  visit. 

"It's  the  best  possible  cure  for  that  poor  feeling," 
Anne  was  maintaining,  "to  go  out  and  buy  something 
you  can't  afford." 

"I  know,  I  know,"  —  Virginia  felt  eagerly  for  her  cue. 
"It  corrects  your  vibrations;  puts  you  in  harmony  with 
the  stream  of  abundance." 

"Possibly,"  said  Anne.  "Don't  you  and  Ken  want  to 
go  down  and  bring  up  the  letters?" 

The  Palomitas  letters  were  dropped  by  the  lately  es 
tablished  rural  delivery  in  a  box  at  the  Ford  of  Mariposa 
Creek  where  the  county  road  came  out  of  the  Draw,  and 
were  brought  up  with  the  lamb-band  by  Demetrio. 


THE  FORD  401 

It  was  hardly  a  reasonable  assumption  that  Anne's 
anxiety  about  her  business  could  n't  brook  the  further 
hour's  delay  before  the  drawing-in  of  the  flocks  would 
have  brought  her  letters  to  her  hand.  But  it  was  in 
the  air  that  whatever  there  was  between  Kenneth  and 
Virginia,  they  must  have  it  out  together.  If  there  had 
been,  on  the  part  of  Anne,  any  anxiety  as  to  what  this 
hour  could  hold  for  her  brother,  she  had  so  far  success 
fully  concealed  it.  Yet  it  was  with  an  odd,  misleading 
tenderness  that  her  gaze  followed  them  down  the  or 
chard.  Steven  Brent,  who  saw  it,  came  and  put  his  arm 
around  her.  He  thought  her  very  beautiful,  this  tall 
daughter,  fit  to  be  the  consort  and  mother  of  men.  Now, 
as  his  eyes  moved  tenderly  over  her  soft  hair,  her  fine 
bosom,  he  wondered  afresh,  with  ever-present  pain,  what 
far-wandering  dart  from  her  mother's  unhappy  destiny 
had  struck  Anne's  chance  of  happiness  to  the  heart.  She 
was  so  tremendously  sure  of  herself,  and  yet  little  things 
—  this  new  wistfulness  with  which  she  watched  her 
brother  and  Virginia  —  set  him  agrope. 

"You  don't  think  that  they  — that  Kenneth"  — he 
floundered.  "I  had  an  idea,  in  fact,  I  rather  hoped  it  was 
the  other  one.  She  seems  —  more  suitable." 

"Oh,"  said  Anne,  "that's  nothing.  There  is  n't  any 
body  for  Ken,  yet." 

"There's  time  enough,"  he  admitted.  "It's  you  I'm 
thinking  of  ..." 

"Oh,  father  ..."  She  put  up  a  hand  to  his  cheek, 
went  red  and  white,  inwardly  stricken.  "Are  you  going 
to  mind  it  so  much,  my  being  an  old  maid?"  She  saw  it 
on  his  lips  to  say  that  he  minded  only  that  she  should 
not  be  unhappy,  and  checked  it  with  her  hand.  "It  is 


402  THE  FORD 

not,"  she  said,  "as  if  I  did  n't  know  what  I  am  missing 
..."  Always  uncommunicative  about  herself,  she  could 
get  no  further. 

She  moved  away  from  his  consoling  arm,  setting  the 
chairs  in  order,  but  she  had  no  heart  to  leave  him 
troubled. 

" You're  not  to  think  things,  father  —  it's  just  that 
I  'm  happier  this  way  than  I  could  be  with  anything  that 
is  likely  to  happen  to  me."  Staidly  she  went  in  to  help 
Addie  with  the  supper. 

Kenneth,  at  the  Wash  of  Vine  Creek,  was  disposed  to 
be  reminiscent.  "I  was  nearly  drowned  here  once,"  he 
recalled,  "  saving  a  three- weeks-old  lamb,  which  was  af 
terward  sold  to  the  butcher."  He  laughed,  being  in  the 
mood  in  which  the  mind  seeks  signs  and  omens.  "I 
wonder,"  he  said,  "for  what  the  ranchers  of  Tierra  Longa 
are  fattening." 

"  Whatever  it  is,  you  will  save  them  from  it  just  as 
you're  saving  them  now  from  Rickart!"  Virginia's  pen 
nants  were  all  out  again.  "Oh,  Ken,  I  can't  tell  you  how 
splendid  all  this  is  — " 

He  met  her  dryly;  all  his  young  energies  pent  up.  She 
was  to  remember,  he  said,  that  as  yet  he  had  n't  saved 
anything.  It  would  come,  indeed,  to  the  Tierra  Longans 
saving  themselves;  the  most  he  could  do  was  to  point  the 
way  for  them.  It  was  no  new  thing,  he  said,  to  be  in  a 
fight  with  Rickart;  only  where  he  had  been  before  on 
Rickart's  side,  he  was  now,  by  the  merest  accident, 
against  him. 

"You  feel,"  she  insisted,  "the  pressure  of  the  Sys 
tem." 

But  neither  would  he  have  that  as  an  explanation. 


THE  FORD  403 

If  he  fought,  it  was  not  as  a  reformer,  but  simply  by 
instinct.  "I  hit  back,"  he  said,  " because  he's  hit  me 
where  I  live.'7 

"  Where  you  live,"  she  exulted,  "is  among  the  people." 

"Oh,  the  people!"  If  it  came  to  that,  he  said,  there 
were  plenty  of  people  whose  relations  to  the  land  were 
exactly  what  Rickart's  were.  They  were  simply  holding 
it  to  make  the  most  out  of  it.  It  was  n't  so  much  a  mat 
ter  of  numbers  as  of  capacity.  The  greatest  common 
factor  of  the  Tierra  Longans  was  their  general  inability 
to  rise  to  the  Old  Man's  measure;  they  were  inferior  stuff 
of  the  same  pattern. 

He  would  admit,  since  she  insisted,  that  the  system  by 
which  land  and  water  became  subject  to  the  greed  or 
caprice  of  men  like  Rickart  was  a  bad  one.  But  she  must 
admit  that  a  part  of  its  badness  lay  in  subjecting  it  to  the 
ignorance  and  greed  of  men  like  Baff  and  Jevens.  No,  it 
was  n't  any  feeling  about  the  System  that  had  got  him, 
it  was  a  feeling  for  the  land.  Land  was  to  be  cherished, 
to  be  made  productive.  ...  It  did  n't  make  so  much 
difference  under  what  system  it  was  bandied  about,  if 
you  lost  sight  of  that  consideration. 

He  lit  a  cigarette  and  threw  it  away,  needing  no  stimu 
lant  but  his  own  embattled  prejudice.  "Land!"  he  said, 
sniffing  the  new-turned  furrow  which  in  the  face  of  defeat 
from  a  new  quarter  spoke  to  him  consolingly.  "That's 
where  I  live;  on  the  land  and  working  it.  Don't  pull  any 
of  the  hero  stuff  on  me,  Virginia;  all  that  I've  been  doing 
is  finding  out  that  I've  always  been  a  farmer." 

Renewed  association  with  the  things  about  him  bred  a 
conscious  sense  of  security;  the  grazing  flocks,  the  ribbed 
hills,  the  steady  fall  of  the  valley  seaward.  "It's  just," 


404  THE  FORD 

he  said,  —  and  the  phrase  touched  him  with  a  fleeting 
recollection  of  its  appropriateness,  —  "that  I've  come  up 
against  the  biggest  fact  in  my  existence.  I'm  Brent  of 
Palomitas." 

Dry  fuel  this  for  Virginia's  flame.  She  felt  back  among 
the  kindling  phrases  to  feed  it.  "But,  of  course,  you'll 
realize  that  you  can't  stop  with  just  getting  after  the  in 
dividual;  it  all  comes  back  to  the  Cap  — " 

His  newfound  sense  of  personal  value  struck  out  against 
befogging  phrases. 

"  That's  the  mistake  you  make,  Virginia.  All  the  time, 
—  there  in  San  Francisco,  —  I  could  n't,  somehow,  say 
it,  but  I  felt  the  mistake  of  dividing  people  up  according 
to  what  they  get  out  of  it.  Rich  against  poor,  I  mean. 
It  is  n't  the  Old  Man's  capital  that  the  people  of  the 
valley  are  up  against,  so  much  as  it  is  their  idea  of  it,  and 
their  idea  of  the  situation,  or  their  lack  of  ideas.  .  .  .  I  'm 
just  seeing  it.  The  System  —  what  system  of  land  and 
water  there  is  —  is  on  their  side,  and  circumstances  are 
with  them  .  .  .  but  I  don't  know  that  that  will  save 
them,  if  they  don't  come  to  see.  Oh,  Lord ! "  he  broke  off, 
recalling  that  it  was  he  who  should  presently  have  to 
depend  upon  their  seeing. 

Virginia's  hand  stole  under  his  elbow  and  worked 
along  his  arm  by  slight,  slow  clutches  and  releases.  It  was 
a  witchery  which  had  worked  well  enough  in  that  old 
ground  of  inducted  social  passion.  "I  know,"  she  mur 
mured,  "I  understand." 

Kenneth  took  his  arm  quite  away  from  her,  ostensibly 
for  the  uses  of  the  smoke  that  he  had  just  rejected. 

The  trouble  with  Virginia  was  that  she  was  sometimes 
genuine.  Where  she  was  dramatic,  as  in  her  flight  from 


THE  FORD  405 

Trudeau,  she  was  irreproachable.  Even  with  Kenneth's 
failure  to  follow,  it  had  still  been  open  to  her  to  hear  the 
clear  call  of  her  consecration  to  the  cause  of  Labor  sound 
ing  above  the  note  of  personal  passion,  against  which  her 
only  resort  had  been  flight  and  cloisture.  Out  of  this  un 
impeachable  attitude  she  had  been  flung,  by  the  genuine 
rush  of  her  sympathies,  toward  Tierra  Longa  where  she  had 
been  born,  and  to  the  Brents  who  were  nearer  to  her  by 
association  than  any  of  her  own  kin.  Where  it  had  flung 
her  at  last  was  against  the  cold  surface  of  his  preoccupa 
tion.  And  how  was  he  to  know,  how  are  men  ever  to  find 
out,  —  since  with  them  the  case  is  quite  otherwise,  - 
that  with  women  the  rise  of  the  social  passion  is  but  a 
flare  to  their  personal  intensity?  Kenneth  had  taken  his 
arm  away  from  Virginia,  not  because  of  the  failure  of  his 
instincts  to  respond,  but  because  he  felt  the  nature  of  that 
response  a  hindrance  to  clear  thinking.  His  need  of  get 
ting  this  thing  stated  to  himself  overrode  even  his  youth 
and  its  importunate  demands. 

It  was  not,  he  was  certain,  what  people  got  out  of 
things  that  determined  their  relation  to  a  given  situation, 
but  the  way  they  went  at  it.  He  drew  upon  the  nearest 
thing  in  his  own  mind  for  a  figure  of  comparison,  the  one 
that  Elwood  had  furnished  him. 

"It's  like  the  way  some  men  are  with  women/7  he  said; 
"  if  they  think  of  them  as  just  a  kind  of  trimming,  why 
that's  the  way  they  use  them."  By  the  sudden  flick  of 
fear  in  the  eye  that  she  turned  toward  him  he  saw  what 
he  had  done.  There  had  been,  in  point  of  fact,  but  the 
merest  tremor,  the  almost  imperceptible  veiling  of  her 
audacity,  but  it  hurt  him  to  see  it.  So  far  as  he  had  been 
conscious  of  anything  in  his  talking,  it  had  been  to  avoid 


406  THE  FORD 

the  implication  of  there  being  anything  like  a  situation 
between  himself  and  Virginia,  and  here  he  had  walked 
deliberately  into  it.  It  was  only  by  the  sense  of  shock 
that  followed  on  his  break  that  he  became  aware  how 
completely  the  situation  had  been  there  all  the  time  for 
Virginia. 

"The  way  men  are  with  women,"  she  said,  "is  n't  al 
ways  easy  for  a  woman  to  discover.  I  can't  even  tell,"  — 
she  tried  and  failed,  for  the  note  of  brightness,  —  "unless 
you  tell  me  first,  what  you  are  up  to." 

"  Oh,  what  I  'm  up  to?  "  That  was  easy.  He  was  up  to 
this  water  fight,  and  to  cutting  something  out  of  it  for 
himself  to  live  by. 

"You  mean  —  to  live  here?" 

"What  else  is  there  for  me?  If  I'm  done  with  Rickart, 
it's  because  I'm  done  with  his  way  of  doing  business. 
I  'm  done  with  business.  From  now  on,  I  'm  a  producer. 
I  shall  produce"  -he  took  it  all  in,  the  rich  rural  pros 
pect,  Anne's  new  fields,  his  father's  flocks,  the  refurnished 
orchard  —  "alfalfa  and  mutton.  Maybe  I  shall  produce 
an  irrigation  canal  and  a  farming  district,  but  the  thing 
I  feel  I  have  a  talent  for  is  mutton."  He  said  it  gayly; 
more  gayly  in  fact  than  he  felt  it,  as  he  was  willing  a  mo 
ment  later  to  show  her.  "It  won't  be  so  easy,"  he  said; 
"it  means  years  of  work  and  short  commons.  All  this 
belongs  to  father  and  Anne;  I've  really  nothing.  I  shall 
just  have  to  stick  at  it.  ...  It  will  be  years  before  I  can 
marry  .  .  ." 

Well,  if  Virginia  had  not  dished  herself  by  the  affair 
with  Trudeau,  this  very  world-spirit  which  she  had 
worked  to  produce  in  him  had  done  it  for  her. 

"It's  fine,  of  course,  Ken,"  —  she  could  n't  quite  let  go 


THE  FORD  407 

of  her  preferred  attitudes,  she  clutched  at  one  of  them, 
indeed,  as  a  plank  between  her  and  drowning,  -  "your 
being  willing  to  join  the  ranks  of  workers;  but  I  hate 
to  think  of  you  burying  yourself  out  of  the  big  world." 

"Oh,"  he  protested,  "I  shan't  be  entirely  out  of  it. 
You'll  be  there,  and  that  will  always  give  me  an  in 
terest  .  .  ." 

It  was,  however,  the  end  of  his  interest  in  her  for  the 
moment.  They  had  reached  the  mail  box,  and,  as  he 
lifted  the  letters  from  it,  he  saw  that  one  bore  the  familiar 
superscripture.  Straker  had  lost  no  time  in  reminding 
him  that  he  was  expected,  along  with  his  other  papers,  to 
turn  over  his  appropriated  rights  to  the  surplus  waters  of 
Arroyo  Verde. 


XVI 

RICKART'S  master  stroke  in  dealing  with  Tierra  Longa 
was  to  take  El  wood  away  with  him.  The  third  day  the 
great  car,  like  the  passing  of  a  sinister  portent,  raced 
northward,  dust  at  its  tail  as  if  the  land  had  yielded  to 
the  primitive  impulse  to  defile  what  it  found  contempti 
ble. 

Followed  a  few  lowering  days  lightened  by  subtle  inti 
mations  of  triumph ;  succeeded  to  these  a  general  slacken 
ing  of  the  tension  of  opposition.  And  then  doubt. 

The  visible  presence  of  the  party  of  attack  had  whetted 
the  fighting  humor  of  the  Tierra  Longans;  its  removal  to 
regions  whence  no  sign  issued,  and  to  which  the  rural 
imagination  could  not  follow  them,  left  both  sentiment 
and  opinion  absurdly  toppling  over  an  empty  chasm.  It 
is  true  young  Brent  professed  to  know  what  the  enemy 
might  be  about  and  from  what  quarter  they  could  be 
expected  next  to  strike;  but  considering  that  they  had 
known  Brent  since  he  was  knee-high  to  them,  was  it 
likely?  To  the  rural  mind,  a  proper  sense  of  caution 
demands  that  you  suspect  something.  Deprived  of  El- 
wood  and  Rickart,  they  suspected  the  device  which 
would  have  bound  them  to  concerted  opposition.  Most 
of  all  they  suspected  its  even-handedness.  According  to 
Brent  it  made  you  safe  against  every  contingency;  its 
weakness  was  that  it  provided  an  equal  security  for  old 
man  Tuttle  who  was  suspected  of  being  a  Mormon  and 
Sturgis  who  made  you  ridiculous  by  succeeding  with  his 
silo  in  the  face  of  your  confident  prediction. 


THE  FORD  409 

Not  for  mere  poetizing  has  the  ancient  word  for  coun 
tryman  come  to  be  the  word  for  unbeliever,  for  Chris 
tianity  is  a  religion  of  togetherness,  and,  pagan  to  the  soul, 
the  ranchers  of  Tierra  Longa  preferred  to  trust  to  the 
partial  gods  of  their  own  boundaries,  the  secret  stroke  of 
fortune. 

That  week  saw  the  end  of  the  Rains.  They  blew  in  on 
the  coast  winds  through  the  vent  by  which  the  river  found 
its  way  to  the  sea,  ran  halfway  up  the  Saltillos  and  broke 
over  the  Torr'  in  a  succession  of  quick,  steady  showers 
followed  by  warm,  bright  days  of  surpassing  clearness. 
As  though  it  had  been  loosed  on  them  from  the  super 
heated  air,  dry  discontent  settled  over  Tierra  Longa. 
Young  Brent,  working  from  ranch  to  ranch  in  search  of 
signers  for  the  Land  and  Water  Holders'  Agreement,  felt 
it  come  like  a  dust-storm  at  the  turn  of  the  season;  a 
sense  of  rasping  tension,  and  then  an  imperceptible 
curdling  of  the  air,  and  suddenly  they  were  lost  in  it  out 
of  sight  and  sound  of  one  another. 

It  began  with  the  givers  of  options.  Many  of  them  had 
wanted  badly  to  sell.  Men  who  had  bought  into  the  val 
ley  under  the  stimulus  of  one  or  another  of  the  rumors  of 
local  development,  men  who  begrudge  the  tying-up  of 
their  capital  in  profitless  fields,  began  to  see  themselves, 
by  the  success  of  Kenneth's  defensive  operations,  done 
out  of  a  sale.  For  it  was  plain  that  if  Rickart  was  forced 
to  surrender  his  scheme  of  taking  the  water  away,  their 
property  would  be  thrown  back  on  their  hands.  And 
after  six  months  of  him,  Tierra  Longa  missed  Elwood. 
He  was  the  enemy,  no  doubt,  but  he  was  also  Illusion,  the 
satisfaction  of  that  incurable  desire  of  men  to  be  played 
upon,  to  be  handled.  What  were  all  young  Brent's  sober 


410  THE  FORD 

calculations,  compared  to  the  bright  air  of  cities  which 
Elwood  diffused  about  him?  As  the  second  week  closed 
with  no  sign  from  him  or  Rickart,  reaction  took  the 
form  of  resentment.  At  the  meeting  at  which  the  final 
measures  were  to  be  taken  in  behalf  of  the  Land  and 
Water  Holders'  Agreement,  practically  nobody  was  found 
to  have  signed  it.  The  few  faithful  did  so  with  the  under 
standing  that,  unless  a  certain  quota  of  property  hold 
ers  eventually  added  then-  names,  the  signatures  were 
revocable. 

"'T  ain't,"  Lem  Scudder  explained,  "that  we're  any 
ways  holdin'  out  on  you.  But  it  don't  seem  any  use  if  it 
ain't  unanermus." 

"  Of  course,  it  would  have  to  be  practically  unanimous." 
"I'd  kinda  hate  to  have  you  get  sore  on  us  — " 
"I'm  not  sore,  Lem;  I  understand." 
"Naturally,  if  it  was  any  way  unanermus  .  .  ." 
"Oh,  the  others  will  come  to  it  in  time;  they'll  see  that 
it's  the  only  thing  for  them." 

Brent  took  that  way  with  them  partly  because  he  be 
lieved  it,  partly  to  cover  a  certain  shame  he  had  to  be  the 
witness  of  their  strange,  self-defeating  grudges.  Of  the 
two  exhibitions  he  thought  their  attitude  rather  less 
tolerable  than  Rickart's  self-defending  cunning.  He  was 
close  to  the  turn  of  mind  which  compels  our  allegiance 
to  successful  villainy  largely  because  it  is  successful. 

That  week  he  began  work  on  his  water  appropriation. 
So  far  he  had  not  been  entirely  abandoned.  Baff  sent  a 
team;  two  of  the  river  ranchers  came  up  with  scrapers; 
the  Scudders  promised  him  a  turn  before  the  fall  plough 
ing.  This  was  something  in  a  measure  understood,  a 
familiar  medium.  But  when,  the  third  day  after  work 


THE  FORD  411 

had  begun,  Rickart  brought  suit,  under  one  excuse  or 
another  they  fell  away  from  him. 

"  It 's  this  away,"  Mr.  Baff  explained;  "we  all  allow  this 
is  a  good  scheme  if  you  can  work  it;  but  we  ain't  none  of  us 
hankerin'  to  have  it  turn  out  that  we've  been  workin' 
for  Old  Man  Rickart."  . 

"Why,  I'd  feel  much  freer,  Mr.  Baff,"  Kenneth  an 
swered  him,  honestly  enough,  "with  the  rest  of  you  out 
of  it.  But,  you  see,  I'm  going  through  with  this  thing, 
and  I  didn't  want  it  said  in  the  end  that  I'd  elbowed 
any  of  you  out  of  it." 

Baff  eyed  him  with  admiration  not  unmixed  with  con 
cern.  "Ain't  bit  off  more  than  you  can  chew,  have  you?  " 

Kenneth  laughed.  "Ain't  seen  me  spitting  any  of  it  out, 
have  you?"  he  answered  in  the  idiom  of  the  country. 

Kenneth  had  a  month  in  which  to  prepare  his  case. 
"More  than  I  want,"  he  declared  to  Anne;  "the  sooner  it 
is  settled,  the  sooner  you  can  begin  your  campaign  for 
settlers  under  the  Howkawanda  Canal,"  -which  was 
the  pleasant  name  they  had  agreed  to  call  it.  Old  How 
kawanda,  the  Warrior  of  the  Gate,  stood  over  the  point 
at  which  it  issued  from  the  river.  Kenneth  kept  up  like 
that  with  Anne  always.  All  they  at  Palomitas  said  it  was 
wonderful  the  way  he  kept  up ;  and  then  that  the  wonder 
ful  thing  was  that  he  was  not  really  keeping  it  up  at  all. 
He  was,  by  his  own  account,  keeping  himself  down. 

The  way  he  put  it  to  them  was  that  his  plan  for  saving 
Tierra  Longa  was  a  perfectly  gorgeous  plan;  the  more  he 
contemplated  it,  the  more  he  was  overcome  by  a  sense  of 
its  gorgeousness.  The  only  trouble  was  that  the  people 
did  n't  seem  willing  to  try  it;  but  it  would  have  worked; 
it  would  work  perfectly. 


412  THE  FORD 

It  would  be  more  to  the  point,  Anne  considered,  if  he 
could  think  of  a  plan  the  people  would  be  willing  to  try. 
She  had  something  of  her  mother's  lack  of  patience  with 
any  sort  of  failure.  Anne  went  white  and  strained  those 
days;  took  the  defection  of  the  Tierra  Longans  much  to 
heart.  If  she  made  what  she  felt  about  it  cover  a  trouble 
of  her  own,  there  was  none  to  know  of  it  but  the  Keeper  of 
Women's  Hearts,  who  must  by  now  be  inured  to  the  keep 
ing  of  pitiful  secrets,  and  did  not  tell  on  her. 

She  bought  a  car,  and  though  it  was  used  chiefly  for 
keeping  in  touch  with  Palomitas,  —  every  member  of  the 
family  learned  to  drive,  including  Peters,  —  she  did  some 
how  pull  her  business  up  to  the  point  which  justified  it. 
Anne,  so  Kenneth  averred,  had  gone  on  a  regular  jag  of 
business;  she  drowned  her  sorrows  in  it. 

Ellis,  who  heard  him,  arched  her  eyebrows. 

"  Anne  is  never  sorry,"  she  protested.  "She  might  have 
disappointments  and  feel  pain,  but  she  would  n't  be 
sorry." 

"Well,  then,  I  wish  she  didn't  feel  so  disappointed 
about  this  business.  I  heard  to-day  that  Tuttle  had  sold, 
but  I  hardly  dare  tell  her." 

"ToRickart?" 

"He  doesn't  know.  To  a  stranger.  That's  the  be 
ginning,"  he  said;  "next  they'll  stampede  it.  First  one 
inconspicuous  sale  and  another,  and  before  they  know  it 
they  '11  be  falling  over  themselves  to  sell.  That 's  what  the 
Agreement  would  have  saved  them  from,  Rickart  in  dis 
guise,  but  they  can't  see  it." 

"What  Anne  can't  see  is,  why  you  are  n't  more  disap 
pointed  yourself." 

"Well,  I  'm  going  to  be,  I  suppose,  when  it  gets  through 


THE  FORD  413 

to  me.  But  just  now  I  can't  think  of  anything  much 
except  to  be  pleased  with  myself  because  I  am  able  to 
think  of  a  plan  that  would  have  the  Old  Man  buffaloed. 
For  it  would  —  if  they  had  tried  it.  I  thought  of  it  in 
twelve  hours,  and  the  more  time  I  have  to  think  of  it,  the 
better  it  looks  to  me.  And  that's  something.  He'll  beat 
me;  he's  got  me  beaten  now  as  far  as  my  scheme  goes; 
but  the  vpoint  is  that  I  knew  just  what  it  would  take  to 
beat  him.  He  may  beat  me,  too,  out  of  this  water  right. 
He  can  do  it  by  a  trick;  but  I'll  know  exactly  what  the 
tricks  are.  I  could  have  thought  of  a  better  trick  if  I'd 
been  doing  tricks.  Anne  could  have  written  me  a  prop 
erly  dated  letter  authorizing  me  to  make  this  filing  as  her 
agent  .  .  .  but  that's  not  the  point.  The  point  is  that  I'm 
only  twenty-six  and  I  know  what  I  'm  up  against.  That 's 
the  difference  between  me  and  Tierra  Longa.  They  are 
afraid  because  they  have  n't  found  out;  the  whole  thing 
is  mysterious  to  them  and  they're  afraid  of  it  ..." 

"I  know,"  agreed  Ellis;  "I  used  to  be  afraid  of  almost 
everything." 

They  were  sitting  in  Kenneth's  camp  under  the  very 
shadow  of  the  Warrior,  from  which  the  work  required 
by  law  for  the  holding  of  his  appropriation  proceeded. 
Out  from  the  white  torrent  tumbling  through  the  Gate, 
Kenneth's  ditch  followed  the  contour  of  the  Torr'  at 
the  level  of  the  middle  mesa,  a  thin  ploughed  line  which 
here  and  there  was  scooped  into  the  shallow  semblance 
of  a  canal.  Kenneth  himself  had  staked  out  the  levels, 
by  the  aid  of  some  simple  instruments  and  the  charac 
terless  capacity  which  had  enabled  him  to  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  the  law  on  no  better  excuse  than  that 
Rickart  could  use  it. 


414  THE  FORD 

Slight  as  it  was,  taken  up  and  cradled  in  his  imagina 
tion,  the  project  fulfilled  every  requirement,  not  only  of 
the  law,  but  of  a  sufficient  occupation  for  a  young  man 
who  had  been  clerk  to  T.  Rickart.  It  was  a  job ;  it  was  the 
curved  edge  of  his  weapon  at  the  throat  of  destiny.  Self- 
imposed  was  the  condition  of  his  sleeping  there  and  sub 
sisting  on  his  own  cookery  and  such  alleviations  as  Addie 
from  time  to  time  sent  out  to  him.  It  was  so  he  kept 
formally  from  implicating  Palomitas  in  his  situation.  It 
supplied  the  need  he  stood  in  of  healing  and  reassurance, 
the  ineffable  consolations  of  twilight  and  the  stars,  the 
healings  of  the  mornings.  He  grew  brown  and  leaner  and 
at  ease  with  himself,  a  kind  of  ease  which  was  inexplicable 
to  Anne  almost  to  the  point  of  irritation.  Which  was  per 
haps  why,  when  it  was  necessary  for  some  one  to  go  down 
to  him  with  bread  and  letters,  she  so  often  sent  Ellis. 

They  had  talked  out,  brother  and  sister,  all  the  possi 
bilities  of  the  situation,  and  to  Anne,  who  valued  talking 
solely  as  a  means  of  arriving  at  conclusions,  it  was  in 
tolerable  to  sit  sifting  the  dry  dust  of  speculation.  To 
Anne,  once  she  had  learned  all  that  was  necessary  to  the 
construction  of  the  work  in  hand,  of  the  depth  of  the  soil 
and  the  basalt  ribs  of  the  Torr',  the  interest  her  brother 
and  her  secretary  took  in  the  intimate  properties  of  the 
earth,  the  burrow  folk  dispossessed,  the  shrubs  uprooted, 
the  endless  talk  they  had  about  it  and  the  books  they 
found  it  necessary  to  read,  were  a  sort  of  sublimated  mud- 
pie  making.  Still  there  was  the  period  of  suspense  before 
Rickart's  suit  to  be  got  through,  and  if  mud-pies  would  do 
it  —  for  they  were  all  inextricably  caught  up  in  Kenneth's 
suspense,  Kenneth's  stake  in  it,  and  Kenneth's  reaction 
to  its  possibilities. 


THE  FORD  415 

As  for  Kenneth,  he  gave  no  sign,  except  it  were  a  too 
pinching  leanness  and  the  way  in  which,  at  every  moment 
when  he  was  free  from  bodily  labor,  he  plunged  into 
the  play  of  his  wdrk,  and  an  unqualified  demand  for 
Ellis  to  play  with  him.  Not  that  anybody  denied  him; 
it  was  wonderful,  in  fact,  the  way  everybody  at  Palo- 
mitas  conspired  to  give  him  Ellis  to  play  with.  You 
would  have  thought  it  was  for  that  Anne  paid  her  a 
salary. 

All  this  on  the  theory  that  he  was  " keeping  up" ;  that, 
genuine  as  his  interest  was  in  the  play  of  his  work,  per 
haps  just  because  it  was  genuine,  quite  to  himself  he 
faced  the  dreadfulness  of  its  being  snatched  from  him, 
and  his  being  found  with  no  status  but  that  of  brother  to 
his  sister.  It  was  a  situation  that  neither  his  sister  nor 
her  friend  could  face  for  him.  They  were  quite  resolved 
there  should  some  way  be  found  of  his  not  facing  it. 

And  in  the  mean  time  the  unexpected  stampede  of 
property  to  Rickart  had  not  happened.  There  had  been 
two  or  three  transfers  of  titles,  but  all  to  strangers,  or  to 
persons  so  well  known  that  the  supposition  that  they 
were  intermediaries  of  Rickart's  was  untenable.  Rickart, 
it  appeared,  was  n't  interested  in  Tierra  Longa  property. 
And  when  the  date  of  Kenneth's  hearing  arrived,  Rickart 
secured  a  postponement.  It  was  all  very  unsettling  be 
cause  it  was  so  little  what  had  been  expected. 

"He's  meaner  than  I  thought,"  Anne  gave  it  as  her 
opinion  of  the  Old  Man;  "he's  playing  a  waiting  game. 
By  September  "  -  which  was  the  new  date  for  the  appro 
priation  claim  —  "Kenneth  will  be  at  the  end  of  his  cap 
ital  and  his  patience;  and  the  people  of  Tierra  Longa  will 
drop  into  Rickart's  hand."  But  though  she  drummed 


416  THE  FORD 

incessantly  with  her  fine  fingers,  she  could  drum  up  no 
expedient  for  diverting  the  course  of  events. 

Ellis,  who  had  adopted  the  family  point  of  view  that 
the  only  figure  on  the  screen  worth  considering  was  Ken 
neth,  planted  a  fruitful  suggestion. 

"If  somebody  could  only  get  at  Mr.  Rickart!" 

"  I  can't,"  said  Anne,  "  after  all  he 's  done  for  me.  And, 
besides,  Ken  has  forbidden  me." 

"Oh,  I  don't  mean  to  beg  him  off  —  but  anybody  who 
had  his  own  reasons  for  not  wanting  him  to  go  on  with 
that  suit  —  anybody  who  could  influence  him?" 

"It  would  n't  be  any  woman  ...  I  think  my  mother 
tried  once." 

"But  suppose  young  Mr.  Rickart  — " 

"Frank?  But  what  reason  would  he  have?  You  know, 
he's  never  answered  Ken's  letter.  Ken  wrote,  of  course, 
as  soon  as  it  all  happened,  and  it 's  just  been  passed  over." 
They  were  sitting  in  Anne's  room  in  Summerfield  on  an 
evening  when  she  had  come  in  from  the  ranch,  reporting 
Ken  looking  strained  and  thinner  than  was  good  for  him. 
Anne  had  her  hair  down,  twisting  long  ropes  of  it  and  bit 
ing  them  in  her  perplexity.  "I  know  he  cares  tremen 
dously,  but  he  won't  have  Frank  blamed;  naturally,  he 
must  side  with  his  father." 

"I  don't  see  why  ...  I  don't  see  why  he  could  n't 
bring  his  father  around  to  side  with  him."  Ellis  took  a 
brush  and  began  to  brush  her  employer's  hair  as  she  often 
did  when  Anne  was  overdone.  "And  it  would  be  easy 
enough  to  bring  Frank  over  to  your  side,"  she  let  fall. 

"I  —  oh!"  And  after  a  longish  interval,  in  which  the 
brush  went  rather  wide  of  its  mark  without  either  of  them 
noticing  it,  "Ellis  —  I  can't  —  you  don't  know  ..." 


THE  FORD  417 

"I  know  there's  nothing  you  could  do  would  make  any 
difference  in  Frank  Riekart's  friendship  and  respect  for 
you."  After  that  the  brush  went  on  with  steady,  even 
strokes  in  silence. 

And  in  the  end  it  was  a  very  little  thing  that  brought 
them  around  the  corner.  One  of  Elwood's  options  expired 
and  was  not  renewed  by  him.  The  giver  of  it,  a  poor  soul 
whose  struggle  with  the  soil  had  robbed  him  of  much  that 
gave  him  title  as  a  man,  met  Brent  in  town  the  day  he 
heard  that  Elwood  was  no  longer  interested  in  his  prop 
erty,  and  took  out  his  disappointment  in  cursing  Kenneth. 
Peters,  who  heard  it  and  had  to  be  restrained,  told  Addie, 
who  told  Ellis,  who  drove  the  car  in  alone  that  afternoon 
to  tell  Anne. 

It  was  wonderful,  she  said,  the  way  Kenneth  had  taken 
it.  He  said  that  the  man  had  a  right  to  feel  disappointed; 
that  it  was  probably  true  that  Rickart  was  waiting  now 
until  prices,  under  the  menace  of  his  water  steal,  dropped 
to  the  breaking  figure;  said  that  he'd  always  been  afraid 
that  if  the  ranchers  did  n't  adopt  his  plan  of  selling  out 
together,  they'd  all  be  sold  separately,  but  that  it  was 
up  to  them.  Said  he  knew  just  how  the  man  felt  and  he 
was  sorry  if  his  own  efforts  to  help  had  turned  out  badly. 

' '  A  hell  of  a  lot  of  good  that  '11  do  me,  you  -  -. " 

It  was  at  this  point  that  Peters  had  to  have  his 
manners  reinforced  by  the  bystanders. 

Anne  heard  it  out,  leaning  her  chin  upon  her  hand,  — 
she  was  still  in  her  office  and  the  day's  work  was  lagging 
to  a  close,  —  and  then,  without  raising  her  voice  at  all,  or 
any  hesitation,  she  wanted  to  know  if  Ellis  was  too  tired 
to  run  the  car  over  to  the  station  and  reserve  a  berth  for 
her  on  the  express  passing  through  about  midnight  to 


418  THE  FORD 

San  Francisco.  And  please  to  say  as  little  as  possible 
about  it. 

That  was  all,  absolutely  all  there  was  between  those 
two  young  women,  except  a  rather  singular  conversation 
that  took  place  while  Anne  was  lying  on  the  edge  of 
Ellis's  bed,  waiting  for  midnight,  not  having  been  able 
to  persuade  the  girl  to  go  off  to  sleep  and  forget  her. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said,  "you'll  marry  some  time, 
Ellis." 

"I  suppose  so,"  rather  faintly. 

"And  have  children." 

"I  hope  so." 

"I'd  like,"  said  Anne,  "if  you  did  n't  think  it  unfor 
tunate,  to  have  one  of  your  children  named  after  me." 

And  if  Ellis  did  n't  understand  much  more  than  was 
said,  or  than  anybody  else  would  have  imagined,  it  was 
strange  that  she  should  lay  Anne's  cheek  to  her  hand  as 
she  did  and  cover  it  with  a  warm  rush  of  tears. 

Speaking  of  it  afterward  to  Ellis  —  and  it  was  very 
little  she  could  speak  of  even  to  her,  —  Anne  said  that  the 
first  definite  assurance  she  had  that  she  actually  would 
get  through  with  what  she  had  come  to  do,  was  in  the  old, 
unaffected  delight  in  her  company  which  streamed  up  to 
her  in  Frank's  voice.  Knowing  the  place  so  well  and 
being  known,  she  had  come  in  without  any  announcement 
and  stood  at  the  corner  of  his  desk.  She  had  one  clear, 
bracing  moment  of  warm  recognition  in  his  "Hel-Zo, 
Anne!"  before  realizations  of  the  later  phases  of  their 
intercourse  pulled  him  back  to  a  formal  "Is  there  any 
thing  the  matter?" 

"Nothing,"  she  said,  "that  I  can  speak  to  you  about 


THE  FORD  419 

here"  He  rose  at  once  and  showed  her  courteously  into 
the  private  office,  where  again  she  had  time  to  measure 
the  depth  and  freshness  of  the  tie  that  she  had  come,  per 
haps,  to  destroy,  in  the  elder  Rickart's  customary,  "Well, 
Anne?"  and  the  unconscious  shifting  of  his  cigar  to  his 
left  hand,  as  though  he  had  meant  to  shake  hands  with 
her,  a  movement  which  she  made  no  answering  movement 
to  confirm.  If  it  showed  her  how  successfully  Kenneth 
had  kept  her  out  of  his  quarrel,  it  at  least  showed  him 
that  she  had  no  intention  of  taking  advantage  of  it. 

Frank  was  rather  grave. 

"I  want  to  speak  to  Anne  privately,  father,  if  you 
don't  mind." 

"Oh  —  ah-um!"  He  bit  hard  on  his  cigar  while  he 
eyed  them  with  a  certain  speculation.  "All  right;  I'm 
just  going." 

Between  father  and  son  there  passed  some  mute  half 
gesture  relating  to  the  use  of  the  room,  in  which,  though 
she  forgot  it  immediately  afterward,  Frank  appeared  to 
exhibit  anxiety,  and  to  ask,  to  entreat  something  which 
was  neither  granted  nor  denied.  Rickart  was  inclined  to 
chat. 

"All  well  at  home,  Anne?" 

"Quite  well,  thank  you." 

"Crops  coming  on  well?" 

"As  well  as  could  be  expected." 

This  was  apparently  thrown  in  to  cover  a  period  of  em 
barrassment  while  he  retrieved  certain  papers  from  the 
confusion  of  his  desk;  but  Anne  was  aware  that  all  the 
time  he  had  her  under  the  closest  scrutiny,  which  — 
having  exhausted  all  reasonable  pretexts  for  prolonging 
—  he  had  finally  to  leave  unsatisfied.  He  went  out  by  the 


420  THE  FORD 

door  of  a  still  more  private  office,  but  it  was  not  until  they 
heard  the  clash  of  an  outer  door  opening  on  the  corridor 
that  the  two  young  people  felt  free  to  speak. 

"Well,  Anne  .  .  .?" 

"  Frank  —  can  you  tell  me  why  your  father  has  post 
poned  his  case  against  Kenneth?"  Anne  was  nothing  if 
not  direct. 

Frank  stiffened. 

" That's  in  my  father's  department." 

"But  you  know." 

"I  should  think  you  could  understand,  Anne,  that 
under  the  circumstances  I'd  try  to  know  as  little  of  it  as 
possible!" 

Anne  looked  him  squarely  in  the  eyes. 

"Yes,"  she  said;  "for  if  you  knew  all  about  it  you 
would  n't  be  able  to  go  on  with  it." 

A  dull  red  stung  in  his  cheek  and  mounted  to  his  fore 
head. 

"I  know,"  he  answered  with  some  heat,  "that  my  father 
has  been  done  by  one  of  his  most  trusted  employees." 

Anne  said  she  supposed  that  was  what  he  had  been 
told.  But  she  could  n't  for  obvious  reasons  push  him  too 
far  on  that  line.  She  could  n't  in  any  case  make  out  his 
father  as  a  liar.  She  hoped,  she  said,  that  he'd  see 
that  if  she  did  n't  take  it  up  on  that  basis,  it  was  because 
she  did  n't  need  to  do  so  in  order  to  prove  that  Kenneth 
himself  was  far  from  supposing  that  he  had  received  any 
commission  from  his  employer  in  respect  to  the  waters  of 
Arroyo  Verde.  "He  could  n't,  you  see,"  she  threw  off, 
"because  he  was  at  the  time  under  commission  from  me. 
I  suppose"  —  she  went  further  —  "that  your  father 
knows  it  was  I  who  set  the  newspapers  going." 


THE  FORD  421 

"Oh,  yes,  we  know  that!" 

"Well,  then,  you  might  have  guessed  that  it  was  I 
behind  what  happened  in  Tierra  Longa.  Poor  old  Ken, 
what's  he  ever  done  that  you  should  suspect  him  of  plots 
and  counter-plots?" 

"We  thought"  —  Frank  was  honest,  and  honestly  re 
lieved —  "that  he  had  picked  up  something  around  the 
office.  Lots  of  employees  do,  and  cut  in  with  the  hope  of 
cutting  out  a  slice  for  themselves.  And  all  old  Ken  had 
to  do  was  to  ask  for  a  slice  — " 

"Exactly!  And  all  /  had  to  do.  ...  But  the  one  thing 
we  did  n't  know  was  that  Elwood  was  working  for  your 
father  ..."  She  went  on  then  to  tell  him  what  she  had 
known  and  what  surmised,  and  how  she  had  arranged  for 
Kenneth  to  do  what  he  had  done.  "And  mind  you,  it's 
all  legal  enough.  Your  father  has  n't  a  ghost  of  a  claim 
if  I  should  put  in  mine.  And  that's  just  what  Kenneth 
won't  consent  to  do.  He's  afraid  of  anything  that  would 
get  me  in  wrong  with  your  father." 

"If  my  father  could  only  hear  this  -  "  Frank  walked 
restlessly  about. 

"I've  promised  he  shan't  hear  it  from  me,  and  as  for 
Ken,  he'd  die  first.  Perhaps  you  can  imagine  that  after 
six  years'  faithful  service  it  is  something  of  a  jolt  to  him 
to  be  accused  of  bad  faith." 

"Well,  it's  a  jolt  to  my  father  to  have  his  wheels  spiked 
like  this.  After  all  he's  done  for  Ken!" 

"And  after  the  jolt  you  gave  us  in  the  Burt  and  Estes 
business." 

"Oh!"  said  Frank,  and  then  "Oh,"  again. 

"No,"  she  answered  to  the  tone,  "Ken  was  n't  think 
ing  of  that;  he's  forgotten  it.  But  I've  thought  of  it  a 


422  THE  FORD 

good  many  times,  and  the  share  it  had  in  my  mother's 
death." 

"  Anne!"  he  cried;  "  Anne!  Is  this  fair! "  And  then,  with 
a  man's  instinctive  avoidance  of  personal  blame,  "If  Ken 
could  n't  afford  it  he  should  n't  sit  in  at  the  game." 

"Yes,"  she  admitted,  "if  he  had  been  playing  the  busi 
ness  game."  She  was  silent  awhile  to  let  the  sense  of  what 
she  had  said  sink  into  him.  "How  much  do  you  suppose 
your  father  would  have  paid  Ken  for  that  surplus  right 
if  he'd  offered  to  sell  it  instead  of  giving  it  to  the  people 
of  the  valley?" 

"Nothing  —  now." 

"Ah,  you  mean — "  But  she  didn't  know  what  he 
meant. 

"I  mean  that  you've  done  for  us.  You.  Oh,  nothing 
that  happened  in  the  valley.  Here  in  San  Francisco. 
Giving  it  all  away  like  that,  it  gave  the  Hetch  Hetchy 
people  the  tip  and  they've  cut  the  ground  from  under  us." 

"And  the  water  stays  in  Tierra  Longa?" 

"So  far  as  we're  concerned." 

"Well,  then  -    '  But  she  left  it  for  him  to  say. 

To  all  appearances  he  found  it  difficult.  He  said  there 
were  a  number  of  considerations  beside  the  fact  that  they 
did  n't  really  want  the  water  of  Arroyo  Verde.  There  was 
his  father  for  one;  his  father  was  sore.  He  was  sore  at 
Kenneth  and  he  was  sore  at  having  his  plans  interfered 
with.  And  there  was  the  question  of  discipline.  Word 
had  gone  out  that  Brent  had  "snooped."  It  was  a  thing 
Rickart  never  forgave  his  employees,  —  knowing  more 
than  he  told  them  —  and  what  could  he  say  to  them  if  he 
backed  down  on  the  suit  against  Brent?  And  there  was 
Kenneth.  If  he  would  n't  make  any  plea  for  himself,  how 


THE  FORD 

could  Frank,  how  could  anybody  make  a  squeal  for  him? 
"How  would  old  Ken  like  that?" 

"He  would  n't  like  it  at  all,"  Anne  admitted;  "that's 
why  you  must  ask  your  father  to  dismiss  this  suit  on  your 
account;  not  because  of  any  feeling  you  have  about  Ken 
neth,  but  because  you  think  it  right." 

Frank  did  n't  see  himself  at  that.  He  had  n't  taken  to 
editing  the  Governor's  morals  yet.  Well,  then,  he  must 
do  it,  she  said,  because  she  asked  him.  To  which  Frank 
insisted  again  that  he  did  n't  see  where  she  came  in. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  "then  it's  extraordinarily  stupid  of 
you,  not  to  see  what  it  would  mean  to  me  to  have  Ken 
discredited  the  way  he  would  be  if  he  lost  this  suit.  It 
is  n't  true  what  Ken  said  to  your  father,  that  I  don't  ap 
prove  of  him.  I  think  he 's  splendid ;  I  did  n't  know  he  had 
it  in  him.  But  it  is  n't  what  I  wanted  for  him.  I  wanted 
hmi  to  get  in  with  your  father.  It  was  I  that  sent  him 
here  in  the  first  place,  and  now,  if  by  something  I ' ve  put 
him  up  to,  he  loses  everything  - 

Frank  said  he  could  see  that,  of  course;  what  he  did  n't 
see  was  why  she  should  n't  put  it  up  to  the  Governor; 
why  she  should  put  it  on  him. 

"Because,"  said  Anne,  "I've  promised,  and  because 
it's  the  last  thing  you  can  ever  do  for  me." 

He  did  n't  see  that  either.  If  she  meant  that  because 
Ken  had  got  at  cross-purposes  with  the  Old  Man,  it  was 
to  be  the  end  of  a  pleasant  friendship  between  them,  he 
would  be  sorry;  but  was  it  fan*  to  put  it  to  him  at  that 
price,  was  it  fair  to  him  f 

"  I  had  n't  meant,"  she  said,  "to  put  it  at  a  price;  it 
is  only,  as  things  are,  the  last  thing  I  shall  be  able  to  ask 
of  you."  She  stood  up  then,  as  if  so  near  to  the  end  of 


424  THE  FORD 

what  she  had  to  say  that  once  the  end  had  come  there 
would  be  nothing  for  her  but  to  go.  He  stood  up  with 
her,  honestly  puzzled,  saying  that  he  had  hoped  there 
were  still  many  things  — 

"It's  not,"  said  Anne,  "that  you  would  n't  do  them  if 
I  asked  you,  but  as  things  are  I  shan't  be  asking." 

"As  things  are  — " 

"As  they  are  with  me.  You  see  ...  I  love  you." 

"Anne!  Anne  .  .  ."  Some  delicate  instinct  in  him,  or 
was  it  fright,  leaped  to  prevent  her.- 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said  quietly,  "when  I  haven't 
loved  you.  It  is  n't  anything  you  have  done.  .  .  .1  think 
sometimes  it  isn't  anything  you  are.  .  .  .  There  are  times 
I  don't  approve  of  you.  It's  just  something  that  is,  and 
I  don't  want  you  to  think  of  me  as  sorry  about  it  ...  or 
be  sorry  for  me  ..." 

"Oh,  Anne!"  he  could  only  say,  "if  I  had  known  ..." 
He  was  distressed  beyond  measure,  he  was  ready,  she 
could  see,  to  go  any  length,  take  any  step  .  .  . 

She  made  haste  in  the  tenderness  of  her  heart  to  release 
him. 

"But  I  could  n't  let  you  know,"  she  said,  "until  I  was 
sure  that  you  had  found  something  for  yourself  that  would 
help  you  to  understand  me." 

"You  know?"  He  looked  at  her  in  grateful  wonder. 

"What  is  there  about  you  that  I  haven't  always 
known?" 

They  looked  at  each  other  as  if  for  the  first  time,  and 
in  a  clear  sincerity  which  made  him  for  the  moment  more 
wholly  hers  than  if  their  glance  had  been  warmed  by 
any  more  personal  passion,  such  as  in  men  like  Frank 
Rickart  must  have  always  a  taint  of  their  baser  natures. 


THE  FORD  425 

It  was  a  moment  she  had  the  wisdom  not  to  prolong,  and 
yet  she  could  not  let  him  go  without  a  bridge  thrown  out 
by  which,  for  his  comfort,  he  might  return  to  the  consoling 
relation. 

"That's  why,"  she  said,  "I  thought  you'd  like  to  do 
this  for  me.  It's  something  you  could  save  me  from;  this 
anxiety  and  disappointment  about  Ken.  ...  I  suppose 
it  is  about  all  anybody  will  ever  save  me  ..." 

"  Anne,  Anne  ...  I  can't  tell  you  what  you've  been  to 
me."  It  was  plain  he  had  not  known  himself  until  that 
moment.  "What  you'll  always  be  ...  the  best ...  the 
noblest  ..."  He  had  her  hands,  and  not  knowing  what 
else  to  do  he  kissed  them. 

"I  hope,"  she  said,  "you  will  be  very  happy.  Shall  we 
see  you  at  Palomitas  this  summer?" 

"I  think  not.  I 'm  going  East.  Miss  Rutgers  wants  me 
to  meet  her  people." 

She  gave  him  her  grave  approval.  But  when,  as  she 
moved  toward  the  door,  she  saw  what  was  in  his  face, 
there  was  something  in  hers  that  was  as  near  to  fright  as 
for  Anne  was  possible.  She  put  up  her  hand  as  if  mutely 
to  say  that  that  was  the  one  thing  he  must  not  ask  of  her; 
and  in  the  same  moment  the  mother  in  her  rose  to  meet 
his  need  of  a  tangible  restoration  to  his  status  as  the  old 
and  valued  friend.  She  lifted  her  face  to  him  where  she 
stood  and  kissed  him  quietly. 

In  the  decent  interval  which  Frank  allowed  himself 
before  he  faced  the  office  force  again,  he  realized  that 
before  he  had  time  to  consider  how  he  would  go  about  it, 
he  would  be  obliged  to  give  some  account  of  his  interview 
with  Anne.  He  heard  the  door  opening  into  his  father's 


426  THE  FORD 

private  retreat;  but  before  he  turned  to  read  the  con 
firmation  of  his  suspicion,  he  had  time  for  a  swifter  real 
ization  still,  that  there  had  been  no  preliminary  click  of 
the  outer  door,  and  to  gather  himself  for  what,  when  he 
did  finally  wheel  from  the  window  out  of  which  he  blindly 
gazed,  confronted  him. 

' '  Father !  You  never  listened ! ' ' 

"Ah,  when  I  saw  what  she  had  come  for,  what  she 
would  probably  do  to  you  .  .  ."  He  was  ashamed,  though 
it  was  not  at  his  eavesdropping,  and  there  was  a  queer 
kind  of  exultation  mixed  with  his  shame.  He  was  pleased 
as  men  always  are  when  by  sheer  force  of  her  woman 
hood  a  woman  outwits  them. 

"Well,  then,"  — Frank  was  rather  high  with  him,  — 
"you  are  prepared  to  hear  that  she  did  'do'  me;  that  I've 
promised  to  use  my  influence  with  you  to  have  this  suit 
dropped  .  .  .  that  it  is  to  be  dropped?" 

"I  did  n't  hear  you  promise  —  "  The  Old  Man  put  up 
a  protesting  hand.  "  Oh,  that's  all  right  ...  I'll  go  you. 
I  only  meant  that  the  promise  was  n't  necessary."  He 
broke  into  a  queer  sort  of  chuckle,  "To  think  of  her  hitting 
on  the  one  thing  that  you'd  have  to  come  to  ...  the 
courage  of  it  ...  the  damned  courage  ..." 

"Father,  if  you  please  — " 

"All  right  —  all  right  ..."  He  looked  speculatively  at 
the  cigar  which  he  had  taken  out  of  his  mouth  as  if  won 
dering  how  it  could  be  got  to  express  his  sense  of  that 
courage.  "I'd  forgotten,"  he  said,  "that  there  are  women 
like  that  .  .  .  the  courage  of  it!  .  .  .  I'd  marry  her  myself 
if  I  thought  she'd  have  me!  I  don't  know  why  men  don't 
marry  women  like  that  .  .  .  why  in  hell  don't  we  ..."  He 
gave  it  up  and  restored  his  cigar  to  its  accustomed  angle, 


THE  FORD  427 

looking  a  long  time  at  his  son  tenderly.  "Of  course,"  he 
said,  "I'm  pleased  about  —  the  other  young  lady.  Any 
reason  why  I  haven't  been  told?" 

"Except  that  nothing  has  happened;  that  is,  nothing 
formal.  Miss  Rutgers  wants  me  to  meet  her  people  be 
fore  anything 's  announced." 

"Oh,  quite  right,  quite  right.  We  must  do  the  correct 
thing.  You  must  let  me  know  what's  expected  of  me." 
His  mind  ran  to  diamond  bracelets  or  a  sapphire  pendant 
or  even  a  tiara.  He  had  an  idea  a  present  from  the  young 
man's  father  was  the  proper  thing.  He  was  immensely 
pleased  that  his  son  had  done  so  well  for  himself.  "I  hear 
her  people  are  quite  the  top-notchers,"  he  hinted. 

"If  you  please  —  I'd  rather  not  ..." 

Well,  that  was  quite  right,  too;  showed  the  boy  had  a 
decent  feeling. 

"I  heard  you  tell  Anne  that  we've  done  with  Tierra 
Longa.  I  suppose  we  may  as  well  go  the  whole  figure. 
I'll  speak  to  Straker.  What '11  you  tell  Ken?  I  suppose 
you'll  have  to  tell  him." 

"I  suppose  so;  at  any  rate,  he's  not  to  be  told  that 
Anne  has  been  here.  You  understand,  father.  I  '11  tell  him 
you've  withdrawn  the  suit  because  you've  become  con 
vinced  of  the  sincerity  of  his  motives." 

"The  hell  you  will  .  .  .  Oh,  well,  go  ahead,  I  suppose 
that  '11  please  Anne  —  I  suppose  I  can  eat  dirt  if  my 
own  son  tells  me  to  .  .  .  Hifalutin  young  beggar!  If  he'd 
have  stayed  with  me  I'd  have  made  his  fortune."  He 
settled  to  his  desk  again.  "And  tell  Anne  —  tell  her  the 
next  time  I  want  to  pull  off  anything  in  Tierra  Longa  my 
first  move  will  be  to  make  her  a  partner." 


XVII 

IT  took  time,  as  much  as  a  week  or  two,  after  the  receipt 
of  Frank's  letter  announcing  that  the  water  fight  for 
Tierra  Longa  had  been  abandoned  and  the  suit  withdrawn, 
before  it  was  borne  in  upon  Kenneth  that  the  situation 
created  for  him  by  the  sudden  release  of  opposition  was, 
for  him,  practically  no  situation  at  all.  If,  as  he  had  said 
to  Virginia,  he  was  done  with  Business,  it  was  equally  cer 
tain  that  Business  was  done  with  him.  There  was  no 
prospect  whatever  of  his  being  taken  on  by  the  Rickart 
Interests,  and  no  likelihood  that  his  life  would  supply  him 
with  any  other  opening  into  the  world  of  finance  half  so 
good.  The  law  as  a  profession  had  never  interested  him 
enough  to  be  thought  of  as  a  sole  means  of  livelihood, 
and  though  he  had  enthusiastically  declared  his  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  mutton  and  alfalfa,  the  only  opportunity 
open  to  him  for  coming  into  a  productive  relation  to 
either  of  these  was  as  a  hireling  on  his  sister's  ranch.  After 
six  years  with  one  of  the  most  successful  capitalists  on  the 
Coast,  he  had  nothing  more  creditable  than  a  scant  two 
or  three  thousand  dollars  and  this  water  right  to  show,  a 
right  which  he  might  as  easily  have  acquired  without  the 
necessity  for  quarreling  with  Rickart. 

It  was  a  right  and  not  a  possession.  He  had,  as  he 
humorously  saw  with  that  new  capacity  for  playing  with 
his  work  which  had  arisen  for  him  out  of  the  stroke  of 
necessity,  proposed  himself  as  a  consort  for  as  much  of 
the  River  as  was  not  claimed  elsewhere.  His  being  mar 
ried  to  it  depended  on  his  being  able  to  support  it  in 


THE  FORD  429 

that  style  to  which  rivers  turned  to  the  use  of  men  are 
accustomed.  If  he  was  able  to  see,  in  the  way  he  had  been 
pitched,  by  the  falling  of  his  house  about  his  ears,  into 
this  adventure  with  a  lady  who  had  been  singing  under 
his  window  all  these  years  without  so  much  as  a  penny  of 
his  attention  being  thrown  to  her,  something  of  that  de 
signing  Hand  which  men  like  to  feel  at  the  crisis  of  their 
lives,  he  was  so  far  fortunate.  Quite  as  plainly  he  read  the 
conditions  of  hard  labor,  years  of  tune,  and  more  capital 
than  he  at  the  moment  saw  his  way  to,  required  to  make 
out  of  his  appropriated  right  a  creditable  achievement. 

This  was  the  situation  as  he  had  made  it,  which,  as 
news  of  it  circulated  through  Tierra  Longa,  bit  slowly 
home  to  him.  It  turned  him  obstinate  at  first,  refusing 
Anne's  seductive  invitations  to  new  planning,  and  finally, 
after  the  first  half-humorous  appraisement  of  it,  turned 
him  silent. 

If  his  first  conscious  instinct,  confronted  with  this 
crisis,  had  been  to  strike  himself  free  from  every  sort  of 
personal  entanglement;  on  its  final  resolution  his  first 
conscious  necessity  had  been  that  of  coordination.  And 
the  result  of  his  first  tentative  cast  had  discovered  him  to 
himself  as  more  solitary  than  he  had  supposed  it  was  pos 
sible  to  be.  He  had  n't,  he  admitted  to  himself,  expected 
that  Tierra  Longa  would  be  wholly  with  him,  nor  yet  that 
he  would  suffer  a  complete  misunderstanding.  What  he 
had  expected  was  that  he  should  become  in  a  small  way 
the  center  of  a  new  community  of  interest,  and  the  nu 
cleus  of  a  robust  opposition.  "  As  it  is,"  he  complained  to 
Anne,  "if  they  think  of  me  at  all,  they  think  of  me  as  a 
good  deal  of  a  fool,  and  if  I've  got  nothing  out  of  it  for 
myself,  that  it  serves  me  good  and  right  for  my  meddling." 


430  THE  FORD 

"Oh,  well,"  Anne  consoled  him,  "as  fools  are  judged 
they  're  partly  right.  After  all,  what  have  you  got  out  of 
it?" 

"I've  got  myself;  that's  something."  It  was,  indeed, 
Anne  thought,  seeing  him  lathy  and  full-chested,  young 
stubble  on  his  chin,  clear-eyed,  but  being  his  sister  said 
nothing. 

"And  I've  got  a  lot  of  things  settled,"  he  argued, 
"what  I  think,  and  all  that." 

"You  haven't,"  —  Anne  insisted,  —  "you  haven't 
settled  anything.  You've  just  escaped." 

"But  — escaped?" 

"  If  you  want  to  have  it  that  way,  —  escaped  the  neces 
sity  of  settling  anything,  of  having  to  decide  things  that 
are  important  to  be  decided.  You  like  this,  don't  you?" 

She  could  bet  he  liked  it!  He  liked  ploughing  through 
the  mesa  because  it  turned  up  soft  and  crumbly,  he 
liked  cutting  through  the  basalt  because  it  was  n't  soft, 
and  he  liked  the  smell  of  sheep  and  getting  up  with  the 
sun  and  being  all  sweaty  and  as  tired  as  a  dog.  Anne  said 
he  need  n't  tell  her  all  this  because  it  was  perfectly  ap 
parent  to  the  observer. 

But  it  was  no  sign,  because  he  liked  going  without  shav 
ing  oftener  than  twice  a  week,  that  anybody  else  liked  it. 
Nor  that,  having  dropped  by  a  fluke  into  the  kind  of  thing 
he  liked,  anything  on  earth  was  settled  by  it.  It  was  a 
mistake,  she  said,  that  women  had  always  made,  thinking 
that,  because  they  enjoyed  being  ordered  about  by  their 
husbands  and  cuddling  their  babies,  it  was  their  God- 
appointed  destiny  and  they  were  therefore  excused  from 
any  further  responsibilities.  So  that  if  it  was  a  notion  he 
had  of  being  a  Heaven-built  farmer,  he  could  be  one,  just 


THE  FORD  431 

as  Baff  and  Willard  were.  He  could  homestead  a  hundred 
and  sixty  acres  under  his  own  canal  and  be  happy  in  it 
until  she  or  Rickart  or  somebody  of  the  same  stripe  came 
along  and  took  it  away  from  him. 

"I  could  have  stopped  Rickart  this  time  if  they'd  only 
pulled  together,"  he  affirmed. 

"  Yes,  if  you  only  had." 

"Me?"  he  said;  "well,  I  like  that!" 

"Yes,  you,  honey.  It  was  a  lovely  plan  and  a  fine  feel 
ing,  but  how  much  did  you  actually  do?" 

"They  could  n't  pull  together." 

"Oh,  I  heard  you,  Ken.  It's  true  they  weren't  with 
you,  but  then  you  were  n't  within  a  mile  of  them.  Maybe 
if  you'd  been  a  little  closer,  they  could  have  come  the  rest 
of  the  way."  Anne,  he  thought,  hit  harder  than  she  knew. 
But  Anne  thought  she  knew  exactly. 

"If  he  slumps  now,"  she  said  to  Ellis,  "he's  done  for." 
Actually  the  greatest  restraint  she  had  put  upon  herself 
was  that  she  might  not  swamp  him  with  expedients  to 
fortune  such  as  sprang  incessantly  from  her  active  brain. 

Two  influences  combined  to  weave  for  Kenneth  the 
frame  of  mind  into  which  his  young  manhood  had  fallen 
as  into  a  snare,  influences  proceeding  out  of  that  secret, 
submerged  childish  life;  the  consoling,  sufficing  presence 
of  the  Torr'  and  the  corroding  touch  of  his  mother's  pri 
vate  dissatisfactions.  The  one  of  these  sustained  him  in 
the  feeling  he  had  of  being  born  to  live  upon  the  earth  and 
work  it;  the  other  obscurely  served  to  push  him  farther 
still  from  Tierra  Longa.  Though  he  did  not  recognize  it  as 
such,  there  was  something  of  his  mother  in  the  resentment 
he  cherished  against  Rickart,  who,  after  so  many  years  of 
almost  parental  interest,  had  been  willing  to  make  him  the 


432  THE  FORD 

victim  of  self-interested  misrepresentation,  and  in  the 
instinctive  though  concealed  contempt  in  which  he  held 
certain  of  the  Tierra  Longans.  For  when,  through  those 
mysterious  channels  by  which  the  Old  Man  kept  himself  in 
formed  of  local  affairs,  and  permitted  as  much  or  little  of 
his  own  as  served  him  to  be  known,  report  had  represented 
Rickart's  abandonment  of  the  water  steal  as  a  mere  turn 
ing  of  the  back  upon  them,  there  had  been  toward  young 
Brent  a  recrudescence  of  that  suspicion  with  which  they 
had  viewed  his  earlier  appearance  among  them. 

For  to  all  of  them,  whether  they  had  hoped  most  or 
feared  most  from  Rickart's  ascendancy  in  the  valley, 
there  was  left  in  the  cup  the  dregs  of  disappointment. 
Life,  business,  chance  and  change,  the  excitement  even 
of  opposition,  had  again  passed  by  them.  They  were 
dropped  again  into  the  humiliation  of  being  too  poor  to 
steal  from.  It  was  n't  that  they  did  not  fully  realize  their 
own  failure  to  rise  to  Brent's  lead;  that  was  exactly  what 
they  did  realize,  and  for  that  they  could  n't  forgive  him. 
They  had  fallen  away  from  the  Howkawanda  Canal,  a 
controlling  interest  in  which  had  been  so  freely  offered,  so 
long  as  they  thought  of  it  as  likely  to  "get  them  in  wrong 
with  Rickart,"  only  to  find  that  it  was  the  one  thing  likely 
to  have  raised  them  in  Rickart's  estimation,  putting 
them  in  possession  of  something  Rickart  had  valued. 
Rickart's  withdrawal  had  given  to  their  vacillations  an 
antic  appearance  which,  in  their  invincible  rurality,  they 
visited  on  Kenneth. 

Much  of  this  state  of  theirs  was  hid  from  him  by  un- 
familiarity;  he  saw  only  that  they  withdrew,  and  plunged 
protectively  himself  into  silence.  He  went  seldom  to 
town,  saw  nobody  but  the  household  at  Palomitas, 


THE  FORD  433 

worked  prodigiously  at  his  canal,  exceeding  the  require 
ment. 

Anne  and  Ellis  used  to  come  out  to  him  of  evenings, 
since  Anne's  car  made  it  possible  for  them  to  be  often  at 
the  ranch  house,  to  sit  on  the  edge  of  the  mesa  and  watch 
the  summer  moon  climb  its  slow  arc  above  the  valley. 
But  their  talk  on  these  occasions  was  mostly  of  what 
Anne  had  been  doing,  or  of  the  night  owls  nesting  above 
the  Gate,  or  the  raccoons  bubbling  in  the  canons.  Now 
and  then  it  touched  the  personal  note,  as  when  Anne 
brought  him  word  that  Virginia  had  gone  to  Los  Angeles. 
She  said  her  work  had  called  her,  but  Anne  chose  that 
occasion  to  add  that  Andre*  Trudeau  was  there  also. 

"  Ellis  is  afraid  she  means  to  marry  him,  but  she 
need  n't  be,"  said  Anne;  "  Virginia  won't  marry  a  man; 
she'll  marry  a  situation."  And  Anne  had  put  it  to  herself 
that  Virginia  must  have  seen  by  this  time  that  Andre* 
Trudeau  was  n't  the  man  to  provide  her  with  that  sense 
of  the  dramatic  which  Virginia's  temperament  demanded. 

This  was  too  subtle  for  Kenneth,  but  he  thought  it 
did  n't  matter.  "At  any  rate,  you  were  mistaken  about 
her  thinking  of  marrying  me,"  he  affirmed,  "she  never 
had  any  such  idea."  It  was  the  best  he  could  do  for  her. 
Perhaps  by  this  time  he  believed  it. 

"Oh!"  said  Anne;  and  then  after  an  interval,  "Any 
way,  it  wouldn't  have  done.  Virginia's  all  right,  of 
course,  —  but  it  is  n't  enough  for  a  farmer's  wife  to  like 
him;  she  also  has  to  like  farming."  Pronouncements  of 
this  sort  from  Anne  had  ceased  to  be  a  red  rag  to  Ken 
neth;  he  had  all  the  appearance  of  taking  this  one  seri 
ously. 

Things  went  on  like  this  until  the  middle  of  August, 


434  THE  FORD 

and  then  all  at  once  the  deadlock  on  Kenneth's  spirit  was 
broken.  Lem  Scudder  broke  it  with  his  team  and  scraper 
and  bag  of  dunnage;  he  came  up  one  morning  out  of  a 
mist  of  heat  and  joined  Kenneth  under  the  Warrior. 

"Well,  old  scout,"  he  hailed,  "how's  things  progress- 
in'?" 

Kenneth  gasped  at  him  in  amazement. 

"Lem,"  he  said,  "Lem,  I  —  I  —  thought  you'd  gone 
back  on  me." 

"Well,  now,"  —  Lemuel  looked  appreciatively  at  the 
thick  shade  of  the  oak  under  which  the  camp  was  pitched, 
and  the  not  too  distant  river,  —  "I  told  you  I 'd  get  along 
as  soon  as  it  was  any  way  convenient.  Did  n't  allow  to 
get  here  much  before  fall  ploughin'  time,  but  it 's  pretty 
hot  down  the  valley;  I  allowed  a  week's  campin'  would  n't 
do  me  no  damage  ...  an',  anyway,  Baff  says  he  's 
comin'  to  do  his  turn  in  September  — " 

Kenneth's  arm  went  around  his  shoulder.  "Lem,  — 
you  old  son  of  a  gun,  —  give  the  team  a  rest,  and  let's  go 
swimming!" 

At  the  end  of  two  weeks  the  two  went  down  to  Tierra 
Longa  together,  and  a  week  later,  Kenneth  burst  into  his 
sister's  office  at  Summerfield  in  the  very  pink  of  spirits 
and  condition.  "Well,  sis,  what  do  you  think?  I've  got 
an  office  in  Arroyo  Verde  and  I  'm  going  to  be  there  one 
day  in  a  week,  anyway,  as  president  and  attorney  for  the 
Howkawanda  Development  Company  — " 

"Ken!  You've  never—!" 

"Absolutely!  Company's  all  organized.  I'm  here  now 
getting  myself  made  notary  public.  And  I'm  going  over 
to  file  a  homestead  on  that  hundred  and  sixty  below  the 
fence — " 


THE  FORD  435 

"Too  late,  Ken,  I  filed  on  that  six  weeks  ago,  and  Ellis 
took  the  one  next  to  it.  You  won't  get  in  under  your  own 
ditch  at  all  if  you  don't  look  lively." 

"Anne,"  he  said,  in  the  most  unstinted  admiration  he 
had  ever  given  her,  "you  are  a  hummer."  They  plunged 
into  an  hour  of  happy  planning. 

The  next  most  natural  reaction  of  Kenneth's  restored 
state  was  that  he  wanted  somehow  to  have  a  talk  with 
Rickart.  He  made  many  excuses  to  himself  for  bringing  it 
off,  not  the  least  sincere  of  which  was  the  sense  he  had  of 
what,  after  all,  he  owed  to  the  Old  Man's  tutelage.  And 
finally,  without  any  excuse  at  all,  he  went  up  early  in 
September  and  presented  himself  at  the  Rickart  offices. 
Frank  was  still  away  on  the  Atlantic  Coast,  in  the  train 
of  Miss  Rutgers  to  whom  his  engagement  had  already 
been  announced,  and  there  was  a  new  stenographer  in  the 
outer  office,  which  gave  an  unwonted  strangeness  to  his 
being  asked  to  wait  there  until  Rickart  could  see  him. 
He  waited  an  unconscionably  long  time,  which  the  Old 
Man  made  up  to  him  by  taking  him  out  for  luncheon. 

It  was  not  until  the  meal  was  ordered,  the  drinks 
brought,  and  napkins  tucked  in  that  they  got  around 
finally  to  the  meat  of  the  occasion.  "Well,  now,  young 
man,"  -  Rickart  folded  his  large  hands  on  the  cloth  be 
fore  him,  —  "suppose  you  tell  me  all  about  it." 

"I'd  like  to  try,"  Kenneth  admitted,  "though  I  don't 
know  if  I  can  explain  - 

Rickart  tucked  his  cigar  away  into  the  farthest  corner 
of  his  still  finely  cut  mouth  to  make  room  for  a  flicker  of 
a  smile.  "  Shoot,"  he  said;  "  I  '11  do  my  best  to  understand 
you." 


436  THE  FORD 

It  was  a  long  explanation  lasting  fully  through  the 
meal,  and  brought  from  time  to  time  little  beads  of  sweat 
on  the  young  man's  forehead,  but  somehow  he  had  man 
aged  to  make  clear  his  conviction  that  the  earth  was  the 
right  and  property  of  those  who  worked  it,  and  that  its 
values  should  accrue  to  them  if  to  anybody.  Incidentally 
he  said  something  of  his  newfound  appreciation  of  the 
need  and  power  of  working  together.  "It's  only  a  glim 
mer  I've  got,"  he  admitted,  "but  it's  enough  to  go  by. 
It's  as  much  as  most  people  have,  I  imagine." 

"Oh,  then  this  is  n't  just  something  you've  thought 
out  for  yourself?  There  are  others?" 

"Thousands,"  Kenneth  told  him;  "so  many  that  I'm 
beginning  to  think  I've  been  a  back  number." 

Rickart  dry-smoked  for  a  time  in  silence. 

"I'd  begun  to  suspect  something  of  the  kind,"  he 
confessed.  "This  'Progressive'  business,  —  I  suppose 
that's  something  in  the  same  line?"  Kenneth  nodded. 
"And  women  wanting  the  vote  ...  I  sort  of  thought 
that  would  knock  things  endwise.  Women  have  a  way  of 
showing  you  that  there  really  is  something  that  gets  at 
you,  deeper  than  business.  Your  sister  Anne — "  He 
broke  off,  remembering  what  it  was  he  must  n't  say  of 
Anne.  "Me,  too.  I  think  I'm  for  business  purposes 
only,  and  then  something  gets  me.  .  .  .  Well,  was  this 
what  you  came  all  the  way  up  here  to  tell  me?" 

"Well,  I  thought  it  was,"  —  Ken  smiled  across  at  him 
shyly,  —  "but  I  guess  the  fact  is  I  was  just  homesick  to 
see  you." 

After  that,  though  they  carefully  avoided  any  mention 
of  Kenneth's  own  business,  they  drifted  into  quite  a  com 
fortable  chat  about  Palomitas. 


THE  FORD  437 

"There's  something  I've  been  meaning  to  tell  Anne," 
Rickart  said,  "ever  since  she  came  into  the  property. 
There 'soil  on  your  land.  Jevensdidn't  look  in  the  right 
place  for  it.  It's  on  the  other  side  of  the  Ridge,  and  it 
runs  pretty  well  down  into  the  valley.  Years  ago  I  had 
the  whole  place  experted  .  .  .  what  Jevens  struck  must 
have  been  a  seepage  basin.  I  guess  it  pretty  well  broke 
him.  He  had  that  young  fool  Hartley  Daws  snooping 
round  the  place  and  I  fixed  Daws  so  he  would  n't  trust 
his  own  judgment,  or  so,  if  he  did,  Jevens  would  n't  trust 
him.  I  don't  know  which  way  it  worked,  but  I  know 
Jevens  did  n't  find  it. 

"Well,  I'm  counting  on  you  to  keep  this  confidential. 
We  don't  know  how  much  oil  there  is,  nor  how  good  it  is. 
With  the  Petrolia  fields  running  so  strong  and  the  price 
crude  oil  is,  there 's  no  good  going  after  it  now.  But  you 
tell  Anne  that  when  there's  a  chance  of  a  railroad,  or 
when  she  gets  good  and  ready,  I'll  go  with  her  ..." 

Kenneth  listened  in  silence  to  this  extraordinary  state 
ment  with  its  mixture  of  friendly  good  sense  and  the  en 
tire  absence  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  conscience.  He 
thought  of  his  mother  and  the  strange  chances  of  his 
youth,  all  so  long  buried  past  resentment.  It  came  over 
him  again  that  the  key  to  the  Old  Man's  success  was, 
after  all,  knowledge,  knowledge  of  land  and  minerals, 
knowledge  of  law,  and,  more  than  everything  else,  knowl 
edge  of  men,  knowledge  of  everything  except  that 
strange,  ineradicable  quality  of  men  called  righteousness; 
the  thing  which  he  could  n't  always  calculate  in  others 
or  get  the  better  of  in  himself.  It  was  a  moment  of  reveal 
ing  poignancy  through  which  he  sat,  and  though  it  took 
something  of  warmth  from  the  handshake  with  which  he 


438  THE  FORD 

finally  parted  from  his  former  employer,  it  sent  him  back 
to  Tierra  Longa  in  a  new  and  humble  sense  of  hope  in  the 
people  among  whom  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  had  cast 
himself. 

It  was  a  mood  which  lasted  him  at  intervals  all  through 
the  four  or  five  days'  revisiting  of  old  friends  and  asso 
ciations  which  he  allowed  himself,  and  followed  him  to 
Summerfield  and  well  out  on  the  Palomitas  road,  for  it 
was  Saturday  afternoon  and  his  sister  and  Ellis  Trudeau 
had  already  left  the  office.  He  rode  out  himself  with  the 
mail  carrier,  and  felt  again  the  nameless  stir  of  incom 
pleteness  which  had  troubled  him  that  night  ride  with 
Anne  the  time  she  had  sent  for  him  about  this  surplus 
water  appropriation. 

It  merged  in  a  need  that  he  had  felt  growing  on  him  all 
that  summer  for  something  warmer,  more  understanding 
than  the  tardy  cooperation  of  Tierra  Longa  or  even  his 
sister's  active  business  partnership.  It  drove  him  silent 
at  last  and  with  a  strange  pricking  to  get  down  from  the 
carrier's  buckboard,  a  mile  before  there  was  occasion,  to 
seek  on  foot,  along  the  ferny  creek,  the  Ford  of  Mariposa. 

It  mingled,  the  pricking  in  his  blood,  with  familiar, 
poignant  images  ...  his  reluctance  to  lend  himself  wholly 
to  Virginia's  version  of  Jacob  and  the  Angel,  the  fascina 
tions  of  'Nacio's  diablo  negro  coming  out  of  the  Draw,  the 
drowning  lamb,  and  his  old  feelings  about  his  mother. 
One  by  one  the  images  wavered  about  him  and  were  re- 
absorbed  as  shadows  into  the  landscape. 

It  was  the  long  hour  of  twilight.  The  creek  ran  a  slen 
der  rill,  and  the  grass  of  Mariposa,  ripe  and  burned  with 
summer,  lay  furry  and  lion-colored  over  the  swell  of  the 
meadow;  the  wind  stirred  it  like  the  waterings  of  some 


THE  FORD  439 

great  creature's  coat,  and  the  sound  of  the  wind  in  the 
Draw  was  like  the  earth  purring.  And  then,  down  the 
hollow  of  the  swale  where  the  lamb-band  had  frisked,  he 
saw  her  coming.  Her  dress  was  white,  and  she  walked  as 
one  seeing  the  end  of  the  way  and  not  the  path  before  her. 

She  saw  him  and  stood  still,  waiting;  the  hem  of  her 
dress  lay  in  the  grasses,  and  the  grasses  stirred  about  her 
feet  as  though  she  had  just  risen,  so  blossom  white  and 
softly  brown,  out  of  the  earth  to  be  the  final  answer  to  all 
his  indecisions.  As  he  moved  down  the  swale  and  across 
the  Ford  of  Mariposa,  it  was,  indeed,  as  if  all  the  tread 
ing  of  the  years  since  last  he  played  there  had  been  but 
stepping-stones  of  the  path  that  led  to  her.  And  as  he 
went  he  felt  a  sudden  stir  and  a  sigh  of  the  air  as  of  the 
passing  of  great  wings,  and  the  angel  of  his  struggle  went 
from  him,  and  he  knew  at  last  the  ineffable  name  by 
which  alone  Heaven  prevails  against  us.  And  though  he 
felt  in  going  that  he  should  always  limp  a  little  on  the 
sinew  of  material  success,  he  knew,  too,  that  he  should 
never  come  this  way  again  and  not  feel  the  magic  and  the 
triumph  of  this  hour. 

"Ellis!"  he  said. 

"Oh,"  she  sighed,  "I  knew  you  would  come.  Nobody 
expected  you,  but  I  knew  .  .  ."  But  it  was  not  until  he 
spoke  her  name  again  that  she  moved  within  the  circle 
of  his  arm  that  closed  softly  roynd  her. 

"If  you  knew,"  he  said,  "it  was  because  you  must  have 
known  how  much  I  needed  you." 

"Oh,  my  dear, my  dear  ...  I  thought  you  would  never 
find  it  out  ..."  And  suddenly  the  arm  went  very  tight 
indeed,  to  still  her  trembling. 

The  wing  of  the  dusk  had  spread  well  over  the  valley, 


440  THE  FORD 

the  sky  above  the  Torr'  was  muffled  by  its  pinions  by  the 
time  they  came  to  the  bottom  of  the  orchard  lane  and  saw 
Anne  and  his  father  looking  for  them. 

Ellis  had  a  moment  of  flurry. 

" Let's  not  tell  them  yet;  they  could  n't  have  the  least 
idea . . ." 

"  Nonsense,"  he  said,  taking  a  firm  proprietary  hold 
upon  her.  For  once  he  had  one  of  his  sister's  flashes  of 
insight.  "I  should  n't  wonder,"  he  said,  —  '1  should  n't 
wonder  if  it  turns  out  Anne  has  been  meaning  something 
of  the  kind  all  the  time."  Which  proved  to  be  the  case. 


THE  END 


SHE  SAW   HIM  AND   STOOD  STILL,   WAITING 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


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